The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed bullish momentum in the opening hours of trading on Friday, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index gaining nearly 1,100 points to hit a high of 48,898.82.

At close, the KSE-100 Index finished with a gain of 616.06 points or 1.29% to settle at 48,424.4.

The increase was in contrast to Thursday when the KSE-100 closed lower by over 400 points, as investors opted to remain on the sidelines amid no progress on the government’s circular debt plan.

However, renewed interest was seen on Friday over the MSCI quarterly review update.

Read about the MSCI update here

Experts attributed the momentum to the inclusion of Pakistani companies.

“Pakistan market rallied 1,000 points in early morning trade after MSCI added record Pakistan listed companies in its indices,” said Mohammed Sohail, CEO of Topline Securities, in a note.

In its August 2023 index review results, MSCI announced the addition of a record 56 Pakistani companies as constituents on its Frontier Market (FM) Index and FM Small Cap Index. It said the changes will take place as of the close of August 31, 2023.

The KSE-100 Index has seen massive buying interest since the staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and gained over 17%.

On the economic front, the Pakistani rupee weakened further against the US dollar with a depreciation of 0.31% in the inter-bank market on Friday. At close, the currency settled at 288.49, a decrease of Re0.89, as per the State Bank of Pakistan.

Volume on the all-share index increased to 368.3 million from 322.2 million on Thursday.

The value of shares also rose to Rs17 billion from Rs12.7 billion in the previous session.

K-Electric Limited remained the volume leader with 53.8 million shares, followed by Oil and Gas Dev. with 22.5 million shares and Lalpir Power with 18.6 million shares.

Shares of 331 companies were traded on Friday, of which 207 registered an increase, 101 recorded a fall, and 23 remained unchanged.