Stock market gains 94.54 points

KARACHI- Bullish activity witnessed at the Karachi Stock Exchange in the final trading session of the week on Friday ahead of the budget leaks and SBP monetary policy announcement due today.
The Karachi Stock Exchanges 100-share index managed to close at 11,973.38 points, up 94.54 points or 0.80 per cent on market turnover of 44.37 million shares.
The KSE market capitalisation amounted to Rs3, 174.17 billion or $36.82 billion while trading value was recorded at Rs2.04 billion or $23.64 million respectively.
The KSE-30 index ended higher 11,590.95 points with the gains of 50.21 points or 0.44 per cent. The KSE future volume recorded at 1.79 million shares and it value was at Rs232.56 million shares with 12.22 per cent spread rate. The investor were expressing hopes for favourable announcements on KSE proposals for reporting capital gain taxes by small investors and rise in tax credit for new listed firms in the federal budget, said Ahsan Mehanti, Director at Arif Habib Investments. Investors remained bullish throughout the trading session led by commodity stocks on strong institutional and foreign interest in blue chip scrips despite concerns for rising circular debt in the energy sector, he viewed.
Budget leaks, on likely change in capital gain tax implementation mode, leads to low volume recovery by the benchmark, in an otherwise a dull session, renewed buying in dividend yielding stocks and speculative activity in various high priced stocks after initial setback, disallowed red numbers prominent in various front line expensive stocks facing various threats, to dominate the benchmark, said Hasnain Asghar Ali, an analyst at Aziz Fida Husein & Co.
Budget leaks suggesting high chances of acceptance of proposals, to change the implementation mode of CGT by the officials, did allow mainly the local participants to arrest low volume decline during early trade, thus disallowing panic to set-in, despite low and sinking volumes, according to the analyst view.
The likely change proposed in CGT collection, will result in increase in revenues from equity market activities besides providing the equity market desired depth, with financing through MTS available at cheaper rates, likely changes in collection mode of CGT will certainly allow the leverage participants to trade at improved capacity, despite a gloomy economic, financial and geo-political horizon, he opined.