KARACHI: The stock market remained listless on Friday until towards the close of the second session when huge gains of Rs9.36 in the price of heaviest weighted stock, Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) lifted the KSE-100 index to settle 155.23 points or 0.53 per cent higher at 29,343.76.

Foreign investors bought shares worth $2.57 million on Friday with the largest inflow of $4m in the oil and gas sector followed by banks which received $2.3m. Save for the individuals, other local institutional participants booked profit on Friday.

Over the week, the stock market recovered 652 points or 2.27pc from the earlier week’s loss of over 1000 points. In their weekly report, brokerage AKD Securities stated that despite minor hiccups on the political front, stocks managed to push forward.

Daily average traded volume clocked in at 159.81m shares during the week, up 4.9pc. Moreover, foreign flows during the week rose to $15.4m.

The highlight of the week remained successful book building of PPL in which the government offe­red 3.5pc (70m shares) of its stake in the entity. Other reports dictating market movement included the submission of final bids for the acquisition of Lafarge Pakistan and impro­vement in banking spreads by 6bps in May to 6.11pc.

Analysts at other brokerage houses counted approval of Rs4.3 trillion federal bud­get by the Parliament and foreign exchange reserves crossing $14bn mark also as sentiment boosters.

Analyst Fahad M. Ali said that looking at overwhelming response to PPL’s public offering, investors built interest in OGDC, as it is next in line, which jacked up the price of the stock to almost its upper circuit, lifting the market out of the red into green.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2014