A massive buying rally was seen at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), with the benchmark KSE-100 Index settling above the 168,000 level for the first time in history, amid a gain of nearly 2,900 points on Thursday.
Buying momentum was observed through most of the trading session, pushing the KSE-100 to an intra-day high of 168,619.32
At close, the benchmark index was hovering at 168,489.62, an increase of 2,849.29 points or 1.72%.
Analysts said that equities have increasingly emerged as the preferred investment avenue for local investors.
“Investors are preferring equities as an asset class due to lack of returns from other asset classes and taxation incentives,” Samiullah Tariq, Head of Research at Pak Kuwait Investment Company Limited, told media.
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.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, in an address on Thursday, said that Pakistan is ‘well-positioned’ to repay a $1.3 billion Eurobond maturing in April next year.
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%.
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