Karachi: Stock market took a breather on Wednesday with the KSE-100 index closing up by marginal 13.28 points to 33,908.62.
The surprise grand rallies in the previous two days, spearheaded by the foreign and local mutual funds, had added 838.55 points (2.52 per cent) to the index.
The market started on a bullish momentum with the index hitting intra-day high by 224 points, but subsequently it simmered down after intense volatility.
While individual investors continued to book profit with sale of $2.91 million worth shares, foreign investors took a pause in their heavy addition to portfolio with relatively lighter buying of $0.31m.
Volumes stood at 304m shares of Rs10.7 billion value, against 317m shares of Rs16.2bn. Dealers thought that strong volume ahead of the budget was a healthy sign.
Analyst Umair Hasan at JS Global observed that the cement sector continued its rally with LUCK and MLCF gaining 0.7pc and 3.7pc.
After a giant leap, the market corrected itself to close range-bound on Wednesday as the political uncertainty surfaced in the metropolitan. Most sectors including banks and oil and gas, traded in a narrow band.
Analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp commented that the stocks closed flat a day before the release of Economic Survey 2015.
Institutional interest in cement, fertiliser and power sectors was witnessed on upbeat fertiliser off-take data; cement local despatches data for May 2015 and falling borrowing costs for leverage stocks.
Research analysts at brokerage Sunrise Capital worked out that the power sector saw heaviest trading 87m shares followed by cement sector 51m, and technology and communication sector 31m shares.
