KARACHI: Stocks emerg­ed from the red on Friday with the KSE-100 index closing with minor gains of 14.45 points to 28,756.

Unlike the previous two sessions, the index did not climb much higher intra-day as investors kept to the sidelines, entering only to take profit when an opportunity presented itself.

The market saw foreign portfolio inflow at $2.29m on Friday, which offset selling by mutual funds and individuals. The investors continued to be gripped by fear of the possibility of new taxes in the upcoming budget and mainly the fate of the Capital Gains Tax (CGT).

The activity remained dull also due to the coming week being the rollover week with open positions at Rs5.03bn (as of May 22, 2014) in the futures counter.

The trading remained centred on the third tier stocks with Pak International Bulk Terminal (right) displacing both K-Electric and Lafarge to climb as the top volume leader with 18m shares traded.

Samar Iqbal, an investment analyst, pointed out that overall market volume dropped 10pc to 130m shares (value declined by 19pc to Rs4.8bn).

Profit-taking was seen in NML and NCL on Friday following poor export numbers for textiles. Interest was seen in OGDC, UBL and NBP whereas some renewed interest was also seen in NCPL, the stock up 3.5pc with volume of 0.78m shares.

On Friday evening, the brokerage houses also came up with the weekly market report. AKD Securities commented that following SBP’s status quo in MPS the index remained subdued.

Over the week, KSE-100 index recorded fall of 127 points or 0.44pc. Average daily volumes grew by 12.6pc WoW to 149.6m shares but the average traded value for the week came off by 3pc WoW to $73.6m.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2014