KARACHI: Stock market saw a volatile session on Thursday but last hour buying tossed the KSE-100 index higher by 53.51 points to close at 35,730.01.

It was a roller-coaster ride with the index recording intra-day gain of 320 points and intra-day loss of 167 points before concluding in the positive territory.

Thursday was yet again the day of low-priced stocks, where three volume leaders, trading at discount to their par value of Rs10, recorded aggregate turnover of 80 million shares or a fifth of the market volume.

Silkbank (R) once again captured the top post in volume leaders list with trading seen in 40m shares and closing at 26 paisa a share.

Volume rose by 21 per cent to 428m shares with trading value increasing by 4pc to Rs14.4 billion.

Foreign investors went on cherry-picking worth $0.64m, while banks were major buyers of $6.19m worth shares against sale of shares by mutual funds valued at $2.49m.

Analysts at Topline Securities said that the OGDCL discovery in Chak Naurang South-1, Chakwal Block, renewed investor’s interest in the E&P sector. As a result, PPL and OGDCL increased by 3.2pc and 1.8pc.

On the banking side, HBL and UBL added 1.8pc and 0.9pc.

Fauji Fertiliser (FFC) announced lower-than-expected financial results for 1HFY15. As a result, profit-taking was seen in the stock which dropped by 4.2pc.

“After FFC announced its financial results, the whole sector saw profit-taking,” confirmed Ahmed Saeed Khan, analyst at JS Global.

FFBL and FATIMA fertilisers were down 3.8pc and 0.3pc.

Cement sector also witnessed profit-taking.

Analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp commented that stocks closed higher led by oil scrips after recovery in WTI prices.

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2015

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