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       KARACHI: Despite bea--rish sentiment overnight, the stock market resumed its bullish trend on Tuesday as investors engaged in value-hunting, focusing on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) sum-mit, propelling the KSE 100 index to an all-time high, closing above 85,500.

       Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said st--o-cks closed bullish in the earnings season rally led by blue-chip scrips as inv-estors weigh strong earnings outlook and diploma-tic gains in the SCO summit.

       He said the easing political noise after PTI called off protests, rupee stability, and deliberations over CPEC Phase II played a catalyst role in a positive close.

       Topline Securities Ltd said the session witnessed a pullback in the fertiliser and exploration and production (E&P) sectors. How--ever, investor enthusiasm remained high due to the ongoing SCO summit, with many anticipating new investment opportunities.

       Key contributors to the index included Mari Pet-roleum, Engro Fertiliser, Oil and Gas Development, Attock Refinery, and Fauji Fertiliser, which together added 425 points.

       As a result, the KSE 100 index hit an intraday low of 84,856.21 and a high of 85,893.99. However, the index settled at 85,840.34 after losing 222.02 points or 0.26pc day-on-day on selling pressure towards the closing hours.

       However, market participation remained subdued as the trading volume fell 11.2pc to 422.07 million shares while the traded value rose slightly by 4.23pc to Rs24.46bn.

       Stocks contributing significantly to the traded volume included Pakistan Telecom (37.86m shares), Hub Power Company (33.28m shares), Kohinoor Spinning Mills (22.45m shares), PIA Holding Company (13.76m shares) and Nishat Power Ltd (13.10m shares).

       The shares registering the most significant incre-ases in their prices in ab--solute terms were Uni-le-ver Foods (Rs126.95), Pak---istan Engineering (Rs75.64), Siemens Pakis-tan (Rs52.25), Attock Ref-inery (Rs34.41) and Ghan-dhara Industries (Rs31.62).

       The companies that suffered significant losses in their share prices in absolute terms were Hallmark Company (Rs98.34), Sap-phire Fibres (Rs93.20), Hoechst Pakistan (Rs40.87), Lucky Core Industries (Rs25.53) and Atlas Honda (Rs23.53).

       Companies remained busy in selective buying, picking up shares worth al---most $20m. However, aggr-essive selling was witnes-sed by banks totalling $19.38m, and foreign inve-stors turned net sellers offloading shares worth $1.36m.

       Published in Dawn, October 16th, 2024