KSE-100 closes above 50,000 after six years with massive 934-point gain

Bulls returned to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), as the benchmark KSE-100 Index gained 934 points on Thursday to close above 50,000 level after six years.

The benchmark index remained in the positive territory throughout the session. It hit an intra-day high of 50,399.92, before closing at 50,365.15, up by 1.89%.

The last time KSE-100 closed above 50,000 was on May 31, 2017.

Across-the-board buying was witnessed among the index-heavy sectors including automobile assemblers, cement, chemical, commercial banks, oil and gas explorations companies and OMCs trading in the green.

On Wednesday, the KSE-100 Index closed lower by nearly 100 points to settle at 49,431.48 points, as investors opted to book profits in a volatile session.

The improvement comes in tandem with strengthening of the Pakistani rupee against the US dollar, which was hovering at the 278 level in the inter-bank market.

Experts attributed the gain at the bourse to an appreciation of the local currency and satisfactory results announced by the companies in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.

Meanwhile, improved economic indicators also played a part as Pakistan’s trade deficit for the month of September clocked in at $1.518 billion compared to a deficit of $2.856 billion from the same month previous year, improving by nearly 47% YoY, according to the latest data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Wednesday.

Earlier, brokerage house Topline Securities predicted that the bourse could potentially come close to the 50,000 level near the general elections, assuming there is a “smooth election process” and the IMF approves the next tranche of the Stand-By Arrangement in November.

“We believe the Pakistan market can potentially experience an 8-10% pre-election rally thereby, has the potential to reach near 50k assuming a smooth election process and the approval of the IMF tranche in November,” said Topline Securities then.

Volume on the all-share index increased to 427.4 million from 332.6 million a day before.

The value of shares traded rose to Rs14.6 billion from Rs8.8 billion in the previous session.

K-Electric Ltd. remained the volume leader with 83.1 million shares, followed by Pak Refinery with 37.6 million shares and WorldCall Telecom with 25.8 million shares.

Shares of 361 companies were traded on Thursday, of which 255 registered an increase, 94 recorded a fall, while 12 remained unchanged.