PSX Crashes Over 6,000 Points, Trading Halted
Karachi: The Pakistan Stock Exchange witnessed a sharp decline during the trading day today, when the benchmark KSE 100 Index recorded an unprecedented decline of 6,249.10 points (5.26 percent), after which trading had to be suspended for 45 minutes.
Trading started with a positive trend at 117,601.62 points, however, the bearish trend prevailed soon after and the index fell by more than 3,000 points to 115,414.09 by 10 am.
By 12 noon, the decline reached 6,249.10 points and the index was trading at 112,542.56.
The daily low was 115,397.00, while the highest level was 117,601.62. The total volume in the early trading hours was 63.14 million shares.
All significant sectors, including cement, commercial banking, oil and gas exploration, refinery, power generation and OMC were under selling pressure. Shares of index heavyweights such as Hubco, ARL, Mari Petroleum, OGDCL, PPL, POL, PSO, Sui Northern and Sui Southern traded in the negative zone.
According to Muhammad Sohail, CEO of Topline Securities, the Pakistani market also came under pressure after the sharp decline in global stock markets.
According to him, the market had shown a bullish trend last week on positive economic indicators but today was a day for sellers.
The main reason for the decline in Asian markets globally was the increase in trade tensions between the US and China.
US President Donald Trump announced that he would not rush into a deal with China, while Beijing also signaled retaliatory measures. These statements created an atmosphere of uncertainty among investors, which affected markets around the world.
Although today’s decline is severe, the KSE 100 Index is still showing a positive growth of 65.78% in terms of year-on-year performance, while the change so far this year remains at the level of 0.25%.
