KARACHI: The stock mar­­­ket staged a surprise powerful rally on Monday as the KSE-100 index surged by 387.01 points or 1.32pc to close at 29,705.07.

It brought to an end the six-session losing streak with the index reclaiming all of the 302 points or 1.02pc that the benchmark had lost last week.

Volume on Monday also climbed by 66pc to 91m shares, from 55m shares that changed hands last Friday. Traded value increased to Rs6bn from Rs2.7bn. The market capitalisation based KSE-30 index gained 308.82 points or 1.52pc to end at 20,568.65.

Investors were encouraged by the upgrade of outlook on Pakistan’s economy to stable from negative by the global rating agency, Moody’s.

The decision to revise the outlook on Pakistan’s foreign currency rating was believed to be primarily based on stabilisation in the country’s external liquidity position.

“The improvement of outlook reaffirms Pakistan’s story of economic revival and will improve the investor’s confidence in the country”, a major stock broker asserted.

Foreign funds led the rally on Monday with sizeable inflow of $4.79m. Bank­ing sector came to life after several sessions of stalemate with the sector-wise highest 19.6m shares traded, followed by cement sector with 18m shares and oil and gas sector 10.9m shares.

The local institutional and individual investors continued to wait and watch, ahead of the SBP Monetary Policy Statement. The market also awaited the start of the results season.

However, there was slight nervousness over political developments leading to a possible show of strength by political parties on the Independence Day.

PTCL rallied ahead of its result announcement on Tue­­s­­day.

Published in Dawn, July 15h, 2014