Karachi: Stocks rose again on Tuesday with the KSE-100 index advancing by 331.96 points (0.99 per cent) to close at 14-week high at 33,895.34.
Foreign fund managers intensified their buying to $13.23 million from purchases of $7.99m worth stocks a day earlier. The foreign inflow was seen mainly in cements at $5.8m; fertiliser $4.2m and banks $2.6m.
Local mutual funds followed suit with the addition of $7.77m worth shares.
The foreign and local funds buying in the first two days of the week stood at the sizeable sum of $33.03m.
Banks sold stocks worth $8.40m in addition to the sale of $6.17m a day earlier. Individuals also decided to take profit with sales of $8.37m worth shares.
Traded volumes increased to a five-week high at 317m shares of Rs16.2 billion value.
Samar Iqbal, VP Equity Sales at Topline Securities, calculated that the two heavyweight stocks, MCB hitting the ‘upper circuit’ while OGDC up by 2pc, contributed 150 points gain in the index on Tuesday.
Major activity was seen in mid tier stocks. The market initially stormed to intra-day gains of 453 points but was later pulled back a little.
Analyst Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp commented that the strong institutional interest on favourable Consumer Price Index data, record PSDP commitments and hike in local POL prices played a catalyst role in bullish activity.
Cement sector rallied for the second day after approval of high development expenditure of Rs1.5 trillion.
DGKC, LUCK and MLCF added 1.3pc, 2.8pc and 1.7pc.
Oil and gas sector continued its upward momentum as PSO, OGDC, and SHEL rose by 2.1pc, 2.2pc and 1.1pc. Banks remained mixed throughout the day’s trade.
