The Karachi’s Stock Exchange 100 Index gained on Friday as investors favored bullish outlook for the upcoming week.

KSE 100 index closed 597 points up at 44178 gaining more than 622 points minutes before closing. Pakistani Awami Tehreek, with PPP and PTI parties has staged a protest in one of the keys areas of Lahore, demanding government either to accept the protestors demand or be forced to dissolve the assemblies. Historically, political happenings have led to a short-term and often long-term pullback in the stock market.

Stocks are off to a strong start this year as index has been trading at net positive since 1st January.

Elsewhere, the State Bank of Pakistan today released the State of Economy. The Central Bank has released a highly optimistic and positive outlook of the economy, “despite external headwinds.” According to the report, “several ‘coincident’ indicators point to a further strengthening of aggregate supply and demand in the economy.”

The report also called for structural and policy reforms in fiscal and external sectors “to address long-standing structural reforms.”

Despite the threats to the government, market is ignoring the sit-ins as investors make most of the much awaited bullish run. Government has been effectively hijacked by the protests during the last two and a half years of continuous protests and political punching.

Sector-wise all share index turnover was led by Cement (33.988 million), Technology & Communication (22.250 million), and Engineering (19.081 million) with Automobile Assemblers (7.650 million) and Power Generation & Distribution (7.298 million) stocks trailing at the bottom.

KSE-100 Index at the day end moved a total of +597.95 points up by +1.37%, closing in at 44178.83 points with index high-low range of 44203.13 – 43580.88.

KSE – All Share Index Volume was at 209.472 million shares, value of shares traded for all-shares index reached PKR 10.747 billion.

KSE – 100 Index Chart – Mettis Global

The index movement was limited within the 622.25 points range.

69 companies closed up, whereas 21 were down at the day end.