Thursday, May 15, 2008, Jamadi-ul-Awwal 8, 1429    

Karachi stock market keeps up upward trend

Amanullah Khan

Karachi —Despite a prudent approach of the local investors and hands off attitude of the foreign ones in the face of prevalent political stir, the market managed to land in green at the end of the day when the KSE-100 Index closed with a 50 points gain here Wednesday.
In fact, the morning session started on a positive note as market participants keeping up the upward momentum of the previous session enabling KSE-100 index to touch its intraday high of 14,654.21 index points.
However, due to current political situation and forthcoming budget, investors preferred to book their profit and KSE-100 index slumped to touch its intraday low of 14,506.82 index level.
However, entry of local institutions in particular sectors revived the market and it finally closed in the green at 14,593.44 index level gaining 0.35% or 50.94 index points.
The trading volume surged by 13.2% from 205.0millionn shares of the previous session to 232.0million shares today.
Sector wise activity especially the sectors which captured interest of investors were Commercial Banking with 53.8million shares, followed by Securities scrips and E&P companies with 33.4million and 26.7million shares respectively.
In individual scrips, AHSL despite being on the pole with volume of 20.7mn shares lost 1.7% to close at Rs 195.0. NORT and BAFL followed with 15.65million and 14.4million shares respectively both closing in green.