Market added a total of 466pts during the session, where the initial start was very fast paced, although profit booking in rest of the session brought the index down. Profit booking was witnessed in E&P, Cement, Steel and O&GMCs sectors, whereas aggressive buying was witnessed in Banks and Fertilizer sectors. Developing situation with respect to Quetta incident and laggard approach by Govt. to meet the protestors’ demands caused concern among investors. News of removal of Additional Custom Duty on 152 tariff lines, also helped Textile and related chemical sector stocks to perform, however, profit booking brought the rates down by the end of session. Among scrips, BYCO topped the volumes with 94.8M shares, followed by POWER (34.2M) and KAPCO (31.6M).

· The Index closed at 45,345pts as against 45,153pts showing an increase of 191pts (+0.4% DoD). Sectors contributing to the performance include Banks (+177pts), Fertilizer (+100pts), Inv Banks (+12pts), O&GMCs (-51pts), Cement (-34pts) and E&P (-26pts).

· Volumes declined slightly from 664.5mn shares to 641.4mn shares (-4% DoD). Average traded value, on the contrary, increased by 3% to reach US$ 159.5mn as against US$ 154.3mn.

· Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include BYCO, POWER, KAPCO, PRL and PAEL, which formed 33% of total volumes.

· Stocks that contributed positively to the index include UBL (+88pts), HBL (+44pts), FFC (+37pts), EFERT (+29pts) and ENGRO (+27pts). Stocks that contributed negatively include PSO (-41pts), PPL (-29pts), OGDC (-19pts), LUCK (-18pts) and ANL (-17pts).

Credit to AHL.