Bulls gained further ground at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) as investors rejoiced after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Pakistani authorities reached a staff-level agreement (SLA), with the benchmark KSE-100 Index gaining over 2,000 points during the intra-day trading on Wednesday.
At 11:15am, the benchmark index was hovering at 167,533.22, an increase of 2,057.20 points or 1.24%.
Buying interest was observed in key sectors including automobile assemblers, cement, commercial banks, oil and gas exploration companies, OMCs and power generation. Index-heavy stocks, including HUBCO, MARI, OGDC, POL, PPL, PSO, SSGC, SNGPL, MCB, MEBL and UBL, traded in the green.
In a key development, the IMF and Pakistan reached an SLA on the second review under Pakistan’s 37-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and the first review under the 28-month Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).
“The staff-level agreement is subject to approval by the IMF Executive Board. Upon approval, Pakistan will have access to about $1.0 billion (SDR 760 million) under the EFF and about $200 million (SDR 154 million) under the RSF, bringing total disbursements under the two arrangements to about $3.3 billion,” read a statement released by the Fund on Wednesday, following the conclusion of discussions with the Pakistani authorities.
On Tuesday, the PSX witnessed a historic rebound as the bulls staged a powerful comeback. The benchmark KSE-100 Index soared by massive 7,032.60 points to close at 165,476.02.
Globally, Asian stocks staged a tentative rebound on Wednesday, helped by dovish comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and upbeat bank earnings on Wall Street, though simmering US-China trade tensions kept a lid on risk appetite.
Powell left the door open to further rate cuts on Tuesday and said the end of the central bank’s long-running effort to shrink the size of its holdings may be coming into view.
His comments, viewed by some as dovish, lifted markets slightly and reinforced expectations of more easing this year, with roughly 48 basis points worth of cuts priced in by December.
Solid earnings results from US banking giants and an upward revision of the International Monetary Fund’s 2025 global growth forecast also underpinned the market, which had taken a nosedive on renewed signs of strain in US-China trade relations.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was last up 0.45%, while the Nikkei rose 0.8% after sliding 2.6% in the previous session.
Nasdaq futures and S&P 500 futures edged up about 0.1% each.
This is an intra-day update
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