Zubair Yaqoob
Karachi
Market continued the ascent realizing a gain of +570pts during the session, but felt the need to consolidate and book profits, which saw index sliding back by -239pts. The benchmark index closed -97pts to close the session. Cement sector has so far shown the strength, which resisted last week and even made a strong comeback when the despair ended. Reports of Cement manufacturers meeting in the coming days to resolve the issues kept the interest alive among investors. On the other hand, news of FFC cutting back the price of Urea concerned investors to ditch fertilizer stocks and consider safe havens such as Cyclicals and otherwise Oil & gas chain. Cement sector again led the traded volumes with 63.2M shares, followed by O&GMCs (26.5M) and Technology (22.7M). Among scrips, MLCF topped the chart with 20.9M shares, followed by UNITY (20.5M) and HASCOL (19.2M). The Index closed at 39,200pts as against 39,296pts showing a decline of 97pts (-0.2% DoD). Sectors contributing to the performance include Fertilizer (-101pts), Power (-42pts), Banks (-32pts), E&P (+52pts) and Technology (+23pts).
