KARACHI: The stock market on Wednesday continued its winning streak for the seventh straight session on higher remittances, briefly crossing 86,000 intraday on easing political tensions and specula-tions of robust corporate earnings.

However, despite aggre­ssive foreign selling, the index scaled an all-time high with meagre gains.

Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said stocks hit a new high aided by banking scrips after the State Bank of Pakistan revised per-party exposure limits for small and medium enterprises and 29pc year-on-year increase to $2.8bn in September.

He said the market witnessed a midsession selling on falling global crude oil prices and foreign outflows.

Topline Securities Ltd said the KSE-100 index experienced significant volatility, peaking at 86,451 and dipping to 85,444, mainly due to profit-taking and the in­­dex’s inability to sustain gains above 86,000. How­ever, institutional buying supported the index for positive closing.

As a result, the benchmark index posted a moderate gain of 5.3 points to close at 85,669.28.

Key contributors to the index included MCB Bank, Lucky Core Indus­tries, Bank Al-Habib, Hub Power, and Habib Bank, which collectively added 292 points.

Conversely, Fauji Ferti­liser, Engro Fertiliser, and Pakistan Oilfield shaved off 215 points.

The trading volume was up 17.66 per cent to 596.05 million shares. However, the traded value fell 5.17pc to Rs31.34bn day-on-day.

Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included K-Electric (55.79m shares), Hub Power Company (39.66m shares), Pakistan Telecom (32.22m shares), Bank of Punjab (27.40m shares) and WorldCall Telecom (26.62m shares).

The shares registering the most significant incre­ases in their prices in ab­­solute terms were Lucky Core Industries (Rs114.32), Hallmark Comp­any (Rs10­2.50), Paki­stan Eng­in­eering Com­pany Ltd (Rs76.52), Pakistan Nati­onal Ship­ping Corporation (Rs42.89) and Khyber Textile (Rs34.63).

The companies that suffered major losses in their share prices in absolute terms were Nestle Paki­stan (Rs75.24), Hoechst Pak­istan (Rs54.13), Sap­phire Fibres (Rs24.11), Leiner Pak Gelatine (Rs21.56) and Pakistan Oilfields (Rs15.62).

The foreign investors remained net sellers as they offloaded shares worth $11.23m.

However, mutual funds maintained their buying spree, picking shares worth $3.50m.

Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2024