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LSE index up 8.77 points

Recorder Report

Lahore: A bullish trend continued to prevail during the entire week's trading at the Lahore Stock Exchange, which enabled the index to improve by 27.17 points. The equities, on the last day, maintained an upward trend amid ascending volume of transactions on Friday.

The LSE index registered a gain of 8.77 points and closed at 395.78 against 387.01 of Thursday, while the total turnover increased to 63.537 million shares as compared to 55.081 million shares traded a day earlier.

The market opened on a positive note. In spite of favourable sentiment, the market could not maintain an upward trend and went down marginally because of selling pressure because the weak holders off-loaded their stocks to square their positions. However, as soon as the second session started, across-the-board, heavy buying helped the market to recover its index.

Most of the investors seemed to prefer to carry forward their transactions to next week, which resulted in an increase in the 'Badla' rate of 11 paisa for the PTC. The market has the potential to further move upward, a broker said.

Dr. Shahid Zia of Zafar Securities was of the view that the market's upward trend was because majority of the companies presented good profit and loss accounts at the end of 1999 as compared to previous comparable periods.

The Security and Exchange Commission's decision to impose heavy penalties to those companies which, in spite of substantial reserves, failed to provide cash dividend to their shareholders also accounted for the market rise, he maintained.

Out of a total of 137 companies, 62 improved their values, nine went down, while 66 stayed glued to their previous levels.

Millat Tractors registered an improvement of Rs. 3, Dewan Salman Fibre was up by Rs. 2.80 and National Refinery gained Rs. 2.

Shell Pak lost Rs. 3, PSO declined by 0.75 paisa and Tri-Pack Films was down by 0.55 paisa.

The PTC continued to remain the market leader with the total transaction of 27.129 million shares, followed by ICI Pak and Bank of Punjab with 12.641 million shares and 6.113 million shares, respectively.