KARACHI - Bulls overpowered the bears at the stock market on Tuesday and buying activity was witnessed in the oil sector as international oil prices crossed $72/barrel. The KSE 100-index gained 79 points to close at 7,796 points on Tuesday. Investors at the KSE remained optimistic over result outlook in oil, banks, and cement sectors, while foreign interest and retail/institutional support played an important role in positive activity at the market, said Ahsan Mehanti of Shehzad Chamdia Securities. Market sources informed that foreign players bought shares worth $6.9 million. Moreover, restoration of Pindori oil field production was taken positive for oil exploration sector. Expectation of early settlement on circular debt was taken positive for OMCs, IPPs. The local bourse was positive in the opening, up by 30.99 points and luckily sustained the positive moment till the end of the day. Index, after adding 79.23 points, closed at 7,796.22 points on Tuesday. Decline in local currency kept the locals active in the cash rich sector stocks, supporting the bull-run in the sector was unveiling of the governments plan to address circular debt issue thus allowing the entire E&P sector to perform, with star performance by oil and gas exploration and marketing stocks. Stock swapping did restrict the market movement, it helped generating turnover besides offering trading options to the market men. Cement and textile stocks continued to witness accumulation mainly the sector stocks having competitive edge on exports, since the trend of post announcement sell-off has been established in case announcements have been at and below par, profit taking in lucky cement was quite prominent although results are yet to be announced. Thereby restricting the entire sector stocks from performing despite healthy turnover, said market expert Hasnain Asghar Ali. Trading activity was slightly better as compared to the last trading session. The ready market turnover stood at 128.638 million shares as compared to last trading sessions 128.396 million shares. Total trading value of the stock market increased to Rs 8.530b from Rs 6.958b of last session. Market capitalisation inched up to Rs 2.299tr as compared to Rs 2.277tr of last session, showing a solid gain of Rs 22b in just one day. Of 403 active scrips at the KSE, 185 gained value, at least 193 lost while the worth of the share of 25 stocks remained unchanged. While with exception of some high and low priced banking sector stocks carrying excitement of buy-back and takeover, the sector stocks continued to witness offloading mainly due to NPL phobia, group specific stocks did register gains. Their contribution to turnover, however, stayed low. After a long time, AHSL was crowned as the volume leader of the day with a healthy turnover of 11.155 million shares on Tuesday, followed by Lucky Cement with 10.987m shares, OGDC 9.136m shares, ANL 7.310m shares, DGKC 6.95m shares, MCB Bank 6.801m shares, Pak Oilfields 6.582m shares, Adamjee Insurance 6.017m shares, JSCL 5.670m shares namely. Leading gainers at the market include Wyeth Pak, up by Rs19/share to close at Rs1,324, Colgate Palm added Rs16.47/share and its total value was improved to Rs345.99, Bata Pak gained Rs14.92/share, closing at Rs665 with a small turnover of only 52 shares, MCB Band up by Rs7.99/share to close at Rs168.65, Pak Engineering added Rs7.80/share and closed at Rs164.80. Conversely, Rafhan Maize down by Rs80.67/share to close at Rs1,576 with the trading of only 1 share, Siemens Pak Engineering lost Rs36.30/share and its total value was decreased to Rs1,078.70, Treet Corporation down by Rs17/share and closed at Rs424, Nestle Pak lost Rs11.50/share, closing at Rs1,087.50, Indus Motor down by Rs8.92/share to close at Rs169.51.