'New-year euphoria' pushes stocks in the green as KSE-100 closes 664 points up.

Stocks began the new year in the green, with the benchmark KSE-100 index closing at 41,400 points - up 664 points - registering a 1.64 per cent increase from the opening bell.

Analysts have attributed this rise to the new year's 'euphoria' coupled with a positive economic outlook in the medium to long term.

Speaking to Dawn.com, Ali Asghar Poonawala, Deputy Head of Research at AKD Securities, said, 'There was no negativity to check the rise today.'

In the past week, on days when the market has risen, the gains have usually been erased by day end as investors turned to profit-taking. However, Poonawala noted that today the market continued its green trajectory because 'there were no dampeners and the new-year euphoria kept going' as expectations from the year ahead are largely positive.

He said a lot of the positivity arose from an expectation that interest rates will go down this year, and with the rupee now stabilising against the dollar, the market was anticipating an influx of foreign institutional investment.

'Inflation came in at 12.63% for Nov '19, meeting market expectations and keeping sentiments buoyant," he said.

Poonawala added that mutual fund participation is expected to continue sustaining upward momentum.

Another analyst at an asset-management company reciprocated these views, saying that the market was on the whole expecting an inflow of dollars in the medium to long term, which was why a lot of investors took their positions today, contributing to the...