KARACHI, April 30: Stock prices soared on Tuesday with the KSE-100 index recording a steep rise of 159.57 points to close slightly short of the 19,000-level, at 18,982.42 points. The activity gathered momentum in the half an hour before the close of the session, when the index witnessed intra-day high at 19,005.30 points.

CEO Mohammad Sohail at Topline Securities stated that the investors accumulated stocks in the hope that the elections would be held in time and the new government would make efforts to resolve economic issues.

Despite low activity compared to the previous averages, the buying pushed index high in the lead of foreign investors. According to figures released by the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited, the foreign buying on Tuesday was the tune of $3.60 million.

Zubair Ghulam Hussain, head of equity sales at Foundation Securities, said that considerable foreign inflows were being noticed in the frontier markets with the spill over into the Pakistan bourse.

Murtaza Jafar Fund manager at Askari Investment management observed that foreign institutional investors had bought the Pakistan equity worth $28 million in April. The foreigners were seen to be picking up stocks such as OGDC, MCB Bank and others, which carried heavy weightage in the index.

Fast moving consumer goods items were turning out to be investors’ favourite after the Unilever buy-back in Pakistan and the reports of Hindustan Lever also to re-purchase its shares on the Mumbai Stock Exchange.

Analyst Veerbhan Bajaj at JS Global stated that the focus on small cap and third-tier stocks also continued where volume leaders of the day included Bata, Services Pakistan and Wyeth. TRG was under selling pressure despite decent results given concerns on instability due to upcoming elections.

General Tyre also closed on the upper cap with volumes of 0.4m shares traded. In the In oil and gas sector, Pakistan Petroleum result was below market expectations but the stock saw some interest by day-end.

Mutual Funds were again net buyers of $0.45 million worth equity on Tuesday, which analysts said represented a turnaround from the first three months of the current year, when mutual funds were the biggest sellers, mainly on account of NIT payback of debt due against NIT State Enterprise Fund, created in 2009 to support the market.

The market capitalisation based KSE-30 index was up by 140.64 points to 14,640.74 points.

Turnover increased by a quarter over the earlier day’s volume at 157 million shares, to 195 million shares traded on Tuesday. Trading value rose by Rs1.035 billion to Rs4.872bn, from Rs3.837bn the earlier day. Market capitalisation increased by Rs35bn to Rs4.664 trillion, from Rs4.629tr.

In all 376 stocks came up for trading on Tuesday with 202 gainers, 159 losers and 15 remaining unchanged.

The biggest gainers for the day were Bata (Pak) up by Rs108.10 to Rs2270.28 followed by Colgate Palmolive higher by Rs92.62 to Rs1945.12. On the declining side, Island Textile lost Rs29.83 to Rs825.67 and Sanofi-Aventis down by Rs16.09 to Rs406.01.

The top-10 actives were led by Fauji Cement with highest volume of 41m shares, up by 19 paisa to Rs8.86. PTCL stood down by 38 paisa to Rs17.92 on 15m shares, after reports of imposition of heavy fines by the Competition Commission of Pakistan. TRG Pakistan hit its ‘lower lock’ by fall of Rs1 to Rs10.82 on 14m shares. Maple Leaf Cement was up 20 paisa to Rs18.54 on 12m shares, Wateen Telecom edged higher by 12 paisa to Rs5.28 on 9m shares and Soneri Bank gained 28 paisa to Rs6.59 on 7m shares.