Positive momentum persisted at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), with the benchmark KSE-100 Index crossing the 167,000 level for the first time in history during the intra-day trading on Thursday.
At 2:10pm, the benchmark index was hovering at 167,276.95, an increase of 1,636.62 points or 0.99%.
Buying interest was observed in key sectors, including automobile assemblers, commercial banks, oil and gas exploration companies and OMCs. Index-heavy stocks, including MARI, POL, SNGPL, SSGC, HBL and UBL, traded in the green.
In a major corporate development, Gillette Pakistan Limited announced that its parent company, Procter & Gamble (P&G), will discontinue its business operations in Pakistan as part of a global restructuring plan.
On Wednesday, PSX closed on a mixed yet steady note as volatile intraday movements kept investors cautious. The benchmark KSE-100 Index settled at 165,640.34 points, gaining 146.75 points or 0.09%.
Globally, tech shares rallied on Thursday, driving Asia stock indexes higher, while gold hovered near a record high and the dollar languished as a weak US labour market report bolstered bets for Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.
The US government shutdown made it a near certainty that crucial monthly payrolls data wouldn’t be released on Friday, but overnight the private ADP employment report showed the economy unexpectedly shed jobs in September, with the prior month also revised to a decline.
Even without the benefit of official labour data, the dismal ADP report had traders pricing in quarter-point Fed rate cuts at each of the two remaining policy meetings of the year as almost a done deal.
The promise of an easier policy environment helped lift Wall Street to fresh record highs on Wednesday, and the Philadelphia SE semiconductor index climbed more than 2%.
Chip sector shares were prominent in leading Japan’s Nikkei to gains of about 0.5%.
Taiwan’s tech-heavy bourse jumped 1.5%, while South Korea’s KOSPI shot up 2.8% after chip heavyweights Samsung and Hynix inked partnerships to supply OpenAI data centres.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.5%.
This is an intra-day update
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