KARACHI: As the political temperatures seemed to simmer down on Tuesday, nervous investors took heart and resumed cherry picking to close the KSE-100 index with a gain of 73.83 points at 32,084.16.

The market opened with extended losses at intra-day low of 195 points, breaking the 32,000 points level, but with the improvement in sentiments, the institutional and individual investors returned lifting the index out of the red.

Volumes rose 49pc and traded value of shares by 63pc over the earlier day. Foreign portfolio outflow on Tuesday was in the sum of $6.99m.

Samar Iqbal, AVP Equity Sales at Topline Securities commented: “Some recovery was seen in spite of falling global oil prices. Investors accumulated cements and other leverage stocks in expectations of further fall in interest rate due to declining oil prices.”

Cement sector saw the highest volume of 67.7m shares followed by banking 67.5m shares and chemicals with volume of 21m shares. DGKC, MLCF and CHCC hit their ‘upper circuit’.

Banking stocks fell with BAFL, JSBL, SILK, ABL and NBP down 0.1pc, 1.27pc, 2.5pc, 2.4pc and 1.29pc, respectively. Chemical sector saw mixed trend with ENGRO, EFERT and FFBL up by 2.47pc, 1.55pc and 0.72pc, respectively, while FFC dropped by 0.68pc.

Analyst Arhum Ghous at JS Global pointed out that Bank of Punjab (BOP) up 6.9pc after news of the bank meeting its capital adequacy ratio requirement and possibility of dividend payment after a gap of seven years.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti stated that the stocks showed recovery led by selected cement and oil sector scrips on strengthening rupee parity against dollar on sukuk issue receipts, import bill reduction impacting earnings outlook in cement, auto and pharma scrips.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2014