Bulls continued to make further inroads at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), with the benchmark KSE-100 Index gaining nearly 600 points during the opening minutes of trading on Thursday.
At 9:35am, the benchmark index was hovering at 157,603.90, a gain of 583.11 points or 0.37%.
Buying interest was observed in key sectors including automobile assemblers, cement, commercial banks, fertiliser, oil and gas exploration companies, OMCs, power generation and refinery. Index-heavy stocks, including ARL, HUBCO, MARI, OGDC, POL, PPL, PSO, WAFI, DGKC, NBP and UBL, traded in the green.
On Wednesday, PSX closed on a bullish note to settle at a new level amid active participation from investors across key sectors. The index gained 457.27 points, or 0.29%, to close at 157,020.80 points.
Internationally, it was Oracle mania that lighted a fire under Asian tech stocks on Thursday, as Japan Taiwan and South Korea set records in what was otherwise set to be a subdued session before high-stakes US inflation data.
Tech investor SoftBank surged 9% in Tokyo after Stargate Project partner Oracle soared 36% in its biggest one-day gain since 1992, taking the 48-year-old tech firm close to the exclusive $1 trillion market-cap club.
That was all thanks to Oracle’s expectations that AI will drive demand for its cloud infrastructure. That prompted pretty much everything AI-related in Asia to rise, by 1.2% in the Nikkei, 1% in Taiwan and 1.8% for Chinese blue chips.
Oracle’s stock rises more sharply than others over the year, moving ahead of its competitors.
AI fever did not stretch to European stocks which looked set for a muted open ahead of an interest rate decision from the European Central Bank. EUROSTOXX 50 futures inched up a 0.1%; German futures even less.
This is an intra-day update
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