KARACHI: Equities continued on Monday their post-Eid bull run into the second week as optimism prevailed following the country’s $3 billion Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) with the Interna­tional Monetary Fund (IMF).

Topline Securities said shares witnessed a strong momentum and remained positive throughout the day as investors looked forward to favourable developments on the economic front.

Investors’ confidence stayed high ahead of the IMF board’s meeting that’ll most likely take place in the current week. Another positive influence was the likelihood of the $2bn inflow from Saudi Arabia, which may materialise sooner than the IMF’s loan tranche.

Arif Habib Ltd said corrections should continue to be viewed as buying opportunities and, even a passive strategy of equally allocating funds to the top five weighted KSE-100 stocks for the remainder of the calendar year should outperform the overall market.

As a result, the KSE-100 index settled at 44,585.13 points, up 377.82 points or 0.85 per cent from the preceding session.

The overall trading volume increased 77.5pc to 440.2 million shares. The traded value went up 42pc to Rs12bn on a day-on-day basis.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included WorldCall Telecom Ltd (28.2m shares), JS Bank (R) (27.9m shares), Unity Foods Ltd (20.6m shares), TPL Properties Ltd (18.6m shares) and Pak Elektron Ltd (18.3m shares).

Companies registering the biggest increases in their share prices in absolute terms were Nestle Pakistan Ltd (Rs220), Rafhan Maize Products Company Ltd (Rs65), Indus Motor Company Ltd (Rs20.04), Service Industries Ltd (Rs15.97) and National Refinery Ltd (Rs14.49).

Companies that recorded the biggest declines in their share prices in absolute terms were Shield Corporation Ltd (Rs24.37), Siemens Pakistan Engineering Ltd (Rs22.80), Mehmood Textile Mills Ltd (Rs22.38), Bata Pakistan Ltd (Rs8) and Ellcot Spinning Mills Ltd (Rs7.87).

Foreign investors were net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $0.09m.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2023