KARACHI: Stocks rallied on Friday with the KSE-100 index adding 318.38 points, or 0.95 per cent, to close at 33,775.12.

Volumes stood reduced to 307m shares valued at Rs15 billion against 348m shares of Rs17bn value traded in the previous day.

Foreign investors were net sellers of $1.08 million worth stocks. Mutual funds continued to accumulate with net purchases of $2.63m.

During the week, foreign portfolio inflow was recorded at $7.7m, up 2.5pc over the inflow of $7.5m in the previous week.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp stated that the stocks closed bullish led by selected scrips across the board on strong corporate results in banking, cement and insurance sectors.

Rising global crude prices, speculations ahead of monetary policy amid falling PIB yields, ease of political situation in Karachi and expected Rs575bn PSDP allocation in federal budget 2015-16 helped in bullish activity at the bourse.

Mohammad Rizwan, VP Topline Securities, commented that the UBL rallied after March earnings announcements which beat analysts’ expectations.

PSMC announced impressive March earnings which helped stock close at 5pc upper limit. This brought renewed interest in other auto assemblers as well. Indus Motors and Honda Cars gained 4.5pc and 4.3pc.

Oil and gas exploration companies also rallied after increase in international crude prices. OGDCL closed 2.4pc up, POL 1.2pc and PPL added 1.3pc.

Analyst at JS Global observed that in the banking sector, UBL rose by 3.6pc as the bank posted better than expected results.

During the week, the KSE-100 index gained 540 points.

Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2015

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