Staff Reporter
Karachi
The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) exhibited a turnaround on Monday. The KSE-100 index rose over 200 points in intraday trading before giving up most of the gains and closing with a meagre increase of 52 points.
Market players took positive cue from international equities and oil markets. During the day, Brent crude climbed $1.28, or 3.2%, to $40.73 a barrel and US West Texas Intermediate crude was at $38.40, up $1.26, or 3.4%.
Earlier, the market opened on a positive note and touched the intra-day high within minutes but battered sentiment over the second wave of Covid-19 dragged the index into negative territory later. However, the index still managed to recover and close with a slight gain.
At close, the benchmark KSE-100 index recorded an increase of 52.43 points, or 0.13%, to settle at 40,784.04 points.
Overall, trading volumes dropped to 276.8 million shares compared with Friday’s tally of 350.4 million. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs9.5 billion.
Shares of 382 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 151 stocks closed higher, 207 declined and 24 remained unchanged.