Bullish momentum dominated the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) as investors rejoiced over Pakistan’s successful staff-level deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which pushed the benchmark KSE-100 Index to close with a gain of nearly 1,140 points on Wednesday.
Positive sentiments prevailed throughout the trading session, pushing the benchmark index to hit an intra-day high of 118,220.88.
“Market open up 1300pts (1.1%) after IMF staff agreement,” said Mohammed Sohail, CEO of Topline Securities, in a note.
At close, the benchmark index settled at 117,772.31, a gain of 1,139.15 points or 0.98%.
Across-the-board buying was observed in key sectors including automobile assemblers, commercial banks, oil and gas exploration companies, OMCs, power generation and refinery. Index-heavy stocks including ARL, PRL, OGDC, MARI, PPL, POL, HUBCO, PSO and SNGPL settled in the green.
On Tuesday, the IMF staff reached a deal with Pakistan for a new $1.3 billion arrangement and also agreed on the first review of the ongoing 37-month bailout programme, the Washington-based lender said on Tuesday.
Pending IMF’s Executive Board approval, Islamabad can unlock the $1.3 billion under a new climate resilience loan programme spanning 28 months.
It will also free $1 billion for Pakistan under the $7 billion bailout programme, which would bring those disbursements to $2 billion.
The development comes after an IMF team, led by Nathan Porter, held discussions during a February 24-March 14, 2025 mission to Karachi and Islamabad, and later virtually.
On Tuesday, the PSX faced volatility but managed to close with a slight recovery at 116,633.17 points.
Globally, Asian stocks followed Wall Street higher on Wednesday and the US dollar meandered as markets awaited clarity on US President Donald Trump’s trade policy ahead of a new round of tariffs next week.
Traders received some hope on flexibility from the White House after Trump said on Monday that not all levies would come on the April 2 deadline, and some countries would get breaks, without providing further details.
At the same time, Trump opened a new front in his trade war with a directive for 25% secondary tariffs on any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela. That initially sent oil prices higher, but the impact was offset somewhat by relief from Black Sea maritime security deals struck by the US in the war in Ukraine.
Japan’s Nikkei advanced 0.35%, and South Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.37%.
Australian stocks gained 0.76%, with softer-than-forecast consumer price data providing a bit of additional support. The Australian dollar eased 0.1% to $0.6298.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng climbed 0.8%. Chinese blue chips were flat.
US S&P 500 futures pointed 0.08% higher after the cash index eked out a 0.16% gain overnight.
Volume on the all-share index increased to 356.73 million from 268.09 million recorded in the previous close.
Whereas, the value of shares inched up to Rs37.49 billion from Rs19.45 billion in the previous session.
Pak Elektron was the volume leader with 29.18 million shares, followed by PSO with 26.88 million shares, and Cnergyico PK with 17.47 million shares.
Shares of 438 companies were traded on Wednesday, of which 206 registered an increase, 167 recorded a fall, while 65 remained unchanged.
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