KARACHI: Stocks exten­ded its gaining streak for the second session as the KSE-100 index adding 406.11 points (1.06 per cent) and settle at 38,627.27.

Regardless of only two days of trade remaining before Eid holidays and being a rollover week for future contracts, individuals threw caution to the wind and bought stocks worth $1.21 million.

Mutual funds also added attractively priced blue chips to their equity funds. Foreigners sold off shares worth $2.67m. The volume increased 37pc over the previous day to 394.3m shares while traded value impro­ved by 22pc to reach $97.3m.

The market started on a firm note with addition of 158 points and climbed all the way to intraday high by 480 points. Investors’ enthusiasm which was built on the postponement of monetary policy till September was further fuelled by the SBP announcement of having received $505.5m from the World Bank.

Reports regarding the In­­ternational Monetary Fu­­nd’s technical assistance to extr­i­­cate Pakistan from Fina­n­cial Action Task Force grey list helped the market in its upward journey. Moreover, the satisfactory financial re­­s­ults of Habib Bank was considered a harbinger of good tidings for banking where performances of other major players were also exp­ected to beat the analysts’ grim predictions. UBL is to announce its numbers on Aug 5.

Other than that, the continued decline in fresh Covid-19 cases and deaths provided comfort to investors who believed that in case of no outbreak after Eid and Moharram, there would be reason to completely open up the economic activities.

As the construction sector took the spotlight, cement and steel were the major winners.

In the former, Po­wer, Maple Leaf, Lucky, Che­­­rat and DG Khan were key gainers while Inter­nat­ional Ind­ustries, Interna­tional Steels; Mughal and Aisha on the latter gained values.

Refineries performed well with Natio­nal, Attock and Pakistan closing in the green.

Profit-selling was largely observed in exploration and production and fertiliser.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2020