KARACHI: The stock market witnessed sharp volatility on Tuesday mainly because of a deadlock between the government and opposition over the Delimitation Bill.

After wild swings throughout the day, the KSE-100 index closed with minor gains of 43.41 points (0.1 per cent) at 38,525.11.

The benchmark opened in the red and knocked down the psychological support of 38,000 points to show an intraday loss of 745 points, touching the 37,737-point level.

Major selling came from foreign corporates that disposed of shares amounting to $6.37 million, overseas Pakistanis $3.43m and individuals $7.32m.

In the second half of the session, local institutions entered to cherry-pick in an oversold market, with corporate entities among the leading buyers of stocks worth $11.05m.

This saw the index swing from the negative to positive territory. It climbed to the intraday high by 139 points before another bout of nervous selling wiped out much of the day’s gains.

Oil stocks stood strong throughout the day with investors not only tracking gains in global crude prices but also currency depreciation. Pakistan Oilfields went up 1.71pc, Oil and Gas Development Company 0.64pc and Pakistan Petroleum 0.29pc.

“This also generated interest in Hub Power, which gained 3pc, as it topped the leader board and contributed most points to the KSE-100 index,” stated analysts at Elixir Securities.

The volume was up 51pc over the previous day to 195m shares. The value rose 43pc to Rs8.68 billion.

According to Topline Securities, stocks contributing to the index rise included Habib Bank, which gained 1.6pc, Engro Corporation 2.1pc and Pakistan State Oil 3.3pc.

Dawood Hercules declined 2.8pc, D.G. Khan Cement 2.2pc, Lucky Cement 1pc, International Industries 4.6pc and Fauji Fertiliser 1pc, scrapping 70 points from the index.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2017