KARACHI: Foreign selling slowed down to $0.94 million worth stocks on Tuesday, which helped comfort investors and the KSE-100 index, which had lost 757 points or 2.8pc in the last two trading sessions regained 278.73 points or 1.05pc on Tuesday.

In the previous six sessions, foreign investors had offloaded shares valued at $14m. According to market experts, the two heaviest weighted stocks in the index Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC) and MCB, which received severe beating, accounted for no less than 666 points in the 757 decline in two days (Friday and Monday).

Brokers and analysts agreed on the suggestion that Franklin Templeton was liquidating its comparatively smaller fund with 0.173m shares of OGDC and 0.266m shares of MCB as of Sep,13,2013 coupled with likely profit taking in its larger Asia fund.

All of that suggested that the news of sale of two heaviest weighted stocks in KSE-100 index by the foreign investors, in the past two days, was quite correct. The investors hoped and prayed that Templeton keeps its larger fund worth $11.7 billion (as of Feb 28, 2014) intact for it holds $827m of OGDC (7.1 per cent of the total fund size) and $139m MCB (1.2pc of the total fund size).

Samar Iqbal, Assistant Vice President at Topline Securities stated that the market recovered by 10.6 pc after falling by around 3pc in the last two trading sessions on slightly improved volumes of 112m shares.

The rebound was attributed to the approval of IMF loan tranche of around $556m and expectations of further currency appreciation with increasing country foreign reserves. Index heavy weight stocks like OGDC, MCB, POL and Pakistan State Oil, which have been major losers in last few trading sessions, witnessed renewed buying interest.

Cement stocks also remained in limelight amid expectations of better sales for March quarter.