KARACHI: Bulls charged ahead for the third day on Wednesday with the KSE-100 index recording gains of 192.01 points or 0.61 per cent to close at 31,872.73.

As the index crawled up to close the gap to its all-time high 32,000-level, the significant feature of trading was the volume of shares transacted which surged by 25pc over the earlier day and rose to a seven-month high at 423 million shares.

“It represents huge improvement over the year-to-date average daily volume of 206m shares,” said a major stock broker.

Foreign investors bought equity in the net sum of $1.09m on Wednesday, breaking a selling spell.

Local institutional investors also got into cherry picking while retail investors entered in droves to search value in small cap stocks.

Thus, the first three volume leaders were all ‘penny stocks’; KEL priced at Rs8.68, took the top place with volume of 48m shares; PIA closing at Rs7.81 with 24m shares was second in terms of volume while Summit Bank with 23m shares of Rs4.15 each stood on the third slot.

Most market participants said that investors’ sentiments received a big boost after the cooling off in political temperature as the government and the major political party in protest hinted their willingness to sit across the negotiation table.

“Positives on political front coupled with better than ever macro-economic indicators are strong contenders to take index to another all-time high,” commented analysts at ‘Alternate Research’, adding that they anticipated a minor correction this week.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti commented that investors’ worries dissipated after the chief regulator confirmed settlement of the suspended KASB Securities Limited outstanding trades in ready and future markets.

Published in Dawn December 4th , 2014