KARACHI: Stocks roared to their best day in three months on Thursday astheKSE-100indexgained 704 points (1.44 per cent), representing highest singleday gain since Nov 1, 2016.

The market started the session on a bullish note, opening gap by 260 points.

As investors joined the bandwagon the index managed to knock down technical barriers and close at 49,696 points.

Market attributed the investors` buying frenzy across all sectors on signs of resolution of broker/regulator contentious issues regarding in-house badla financing.

Investors` confidence was boosted by reports of consensus between the two sides on a new margin product. Traders say that a SECP notification on the matterwas likely to be released today. Consequently, buying was seen across the board, with index heavy weightsgaining HBL 3.08pc, LUCK 1.72pc, UBL 1.43pc, MCB 1.58pc and SEARL 3.7pc, cumulatively adding 238points to the index.

SNGP continued it`s bullrun to close once again limit up after announcing capitalexpenditure of $1 billion on second LNG pipeline.

The volume surged by 70pc to 398 million sharesfrom 235m shares and the trading value by 22pc Rs17.7bn f rom Rs14.3bn.

Amid heightened sense of relief 60 stocks closed on their upper circuit limit while only 11 scrips closed on their lower limit. Fewer than five stocks showed a double-digit decline.

Analyst Nabeel Haroon at JS Global commented that the banking sector led the rally as CPI number for Feb 2017 clocked in at lower than expected 4.22pc yearon-year (YoY) versus 3.66pc YoY in Jan 2017. Apart from HBL (which was included in mid cap index), MARI, SEARL, EFERT, FCCL, and NML gained on positive news of inclusion in FTSE global equity index series Asia Pacific (ex-Japan regionalmidcapindex)inits semi-annual review.

From sector perspective major contributor were health care up 2.23pc, utilities 2.06pcandindustrials1.89pc.