ZUBAIR YAQOOB
KARACHI Market saw an unprecedented surge on Friday that led to market halt at 10:52 PM for 60mins. A host of factors, all positive, from SBP’s surprise rate cut to deferment of G20 debt and IMF provided COVID-19 relief fund contributed to the ascend in index. The benchmark index realized an increase of 1927pts during the session and closed at +1498pts (unadjusted). Market also realized 300M mark for shares traded. Banking sector stocks that were not supposed to perform due to NIM suppression also saw increase in rates touching recent highs, but subsided by the end of session. Throughout the session, Cement, Fertilizer, Steel, Pharma sectors traded at upper circuit, primarily for the reason that these sectors were largely leveraged and the rate cut helped reduce the incidence of financial charges. On the other hand, WTI priced dropped during the session to $18.05 during the session without denting the sentiment for local oil & gas scrips. Banking sector contributed the most to the volumes with 53.2M shares, followed by Cement (41.4M) and Power (29M). Among scrips, KEL topped the volumes with 22.9M shares, followed by HASCOL (21.3M) and BOP (19.6M). The Index closed at 32,831pts as against 31,329pts showing an increase of +1502pts (+4.8% DoD). Sectors contributing to the performance include Fertilizer (+323pts), Cement (+187pts), E&P (+171pts), Power (+149pts) and O&GMCs (+98pts).