KARACHI: Stocks recovered on Thursday with the KSE-100 index closing up by 90.85 points to 30,204.09. The market capitalisation also crossed the Rs7 trillion mark.

It was not a comfortable journey upwards, however, since the index intra-day took several dips in the red. Volume decline sharply by 42 per cent to 152 million shares while traded value also stood reduced to Rs9 billion.

Foreigners some sold more shares on Thursday, though in the marginal sum of $0.35m, but taking the last four sessions aggregate sell-off to $9.81m.

Most analysts thought that the investor sentiments received a boost from the ECC meeting, which was expected to take some favourable decisions in regard to oil and gas companies under the Petroleum Policy.

Samar Iqbal AVP Equity Sales at Topline Securities commented that the Index recovered after cherry picking in selected stocks coupled with better than expected Sept results.

“PSO and Mari remained in limelight due to investors expectations of favourable outcome from ECC meeting.

“Auto sector rallied amid hopes of favourable changes in tax regime coupled with Government’s announcement of launching of subsidised car financing and depreciating Japanese Yen,” Samar said.

Analyst Muhammad Mobeen commented that the major highlight for the day in oil and gas sector was Mari Petroleum (MARI) which closed up by 4.8pc on the back of rumours regarding the likely approval of the pricing formula in the ECC meeting.

Also, the auto sector regained lost momentum and headed North led by PSMC and HCAR on positive anticipation in the upcoming auto policy. ATRL went down by 3.6pc following disappointing results showing an earnings per share (eps) of Rs0.08 for 1QFY15 (against eps of Rs7.06 in 1QFY14).

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2014