KARACHI: Stocks rally was halted on Tuesday as the KSE-100 index finished on a minor decline of 13.34 points at 30,225.62, following a volatile trading with the benchmark swinging wildly in a range of 171 points.

Foreign outflow entered into the third week with sell-off worth $2.95 million worth equity on Tuesday. Added to the Monday’s overseas’ investors’ sale of $2.61m worth shares and last two weeks offloading of stocks worth $24.1m, the total outflow stood at $29.7m.

There was however, little concern as the investors concentrated on corporate results which brought out earnings growth with tidy payouts.

“High volumes were seen in the cement sector with the first three volume leaders being Maple Leaf, Lafarge Pakistan and Fauji Cement. Investors were attracted towards the Textile and Auto sectors as they anticipated a positive textile and auto policies,” stated Fahad M.Ali at JS Global.

The analyst said that the results of PSO were better than anticipated, triggering interest in the scrip. News relating to delay in the acquisition of Lafarge Cement by Bestway Cement created negative sentiment in the stock bringing it down by 37 paisa.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp observed that the economic concerns, rising political noise over privatisation of profitable SOEs and uncertainty over outlook for global equities and commodities played a catalyst role in bearish activity despite easing circular debt worries after Nepra allowance for increase in power tariff for Sept 14 under monthly fuel adjustment.

Brokerage Sunrise Capital noted that selling was observed in most of the banking stocks as NBP, MCB and AKBL dropped by 0.12 per cent, 0.90pc and 0.93pc, respectively, while UBL gained 1.05pc.

Published in Dawn, October 29th , 2014