KARACHI: Stocks recovered on Tuesday with the KSE-100 index gaining 121.27 points to close at 36,205.94.

Volume was up 23 per cent to 328 million shares while trading value declined by 5pc to Rs11.9 billion over the earlier day.

“Stability in international markets prompted investors to take fresh positions in oil stocks like OGDCL, PPL and POL, which are up by 0.4pc to 1.5pc,” said dealers at Topline Securities.

Some profit-taking was witnessed in MCB Bank, following its June 2015 result announcement.

Sui Southern Gas Company was up by 2.6pc and Sui Northern Gas Pipelines by 5pc, after news of an expected increase in Unaccounted for Gas benchmark from 4.5pc to 9pc.

Analyst Ahmed Saeed Khan at JS Global Securities stated that the market emerged from negative trajectory to make an intraday high of 178 points with respectable volumes.

Major support of the day came from the two biggest sectors, banking and oil.

The oil sector rallied with the exception of ATRL and NRL that remained negative throughout the day.

Star stocks of the day were PSO up 1.2pc, HASCOL 5pc and POL 1.5pc.

The auto sector remained unusually depressed as profit-taking was witnessed in the selected scrips. Biggest laggard on the sector was HINO down 5pc.

Major gainers on the banking sector were UBL up 0.7pc and ABL 0.9pc.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp stated that the stocks recovered amid institutional support on speculations ahead of major corporate earnings announcement.

Strong home remittances and foreign exchange reserves, hopes for release of IMF tranche with commitments for reducing circular debt, privatisation of state-owned enterprises and revision in gas tariff played a catalyst role in bullish close.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2015

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