KARACHI: Bulls dominated the stock market on Thursday as the KSE-100 index added 188.29 points (0.57pc) to close at 33,103.73.

On a day of mourning for the civilians killed a day earlier, the traded volume remained dull at 213 million shares of the value of Rs9.8 billion. Investors nonetheless took fresh positions ahead of the monetary policy likely to be announced on Saturday.

“Declining T-Bill yields increased hopes that the benchmark interest rate will further decline from current 8pc,” said Samar Iqbal, VP Equity Sales at Topline Securities. The other market mover was the prime minister taking political leadership into confidence over multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

“The cut-off yields on T-bills slashed again by up to 44bps which reflected possibility of an interest rate cut,” said analysts at Foundation Securities. The upcoming budget also kept investors cautious.

Foreign investors bought stocks of net $3.11m, with major inflow of $1m in the oil and gas sector and $0.9m in banks. While individuals bought $2.73m stocks, mainly in the volume leader third-tier stocks, both companies and mutual funds booked profit with sale of $4.60m and $4.03m, respectively.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp said the stocks closed bullish on institutional interest in an oversold market. Recovery in global crude prices, the government accord with the IMF for $506m tranche release, favourable OMCs (oil marketing companies) sales data for April 2015 and easing political uncertainty played a catalyst role in bullish activity at the KSE.

Buying was witnessed in selected fundamentally str­ong stocks which still provide healthy upside. In the automobile sector, HCAR announced its financial res­ults with eps of Rs22.15 and a cash dividend of Rs5 per share.

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2015

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