The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed a second consecutive negative session on Wednesday, as it benchmark KSE-100 Index closed lower by nearly 1,600 points on late-session selling.
The KSE-100 witnessed range-bound trading in the first half of the session, managing to hit an intra-day high of 115,256.16, around 200 points higher compared to the previous day close.
However, the latter hours witnessed strong selling that pushed the index to an intra-day low of 113,359.38.
At close, the benchmark index settled at 113,443.43, down by 1,598.82 points or 1.39%.
Earlier, selling was witnessed in key sectors including automobile assemblers, commercial banks, fertiliser, oil and gas exploration companies, OMCs and power generation. Index-heavy stocks including HUBCO, SSGC, SNGP, OGDC, MARI, PPL, ENGRO, MEBL, NBP and UBL traded in the red.
“We think politics and market concerns around the new US administration are key factors dragging investor sentiment,” said Intermarket Securities in a note.
The brokerage house said the market might remain rangebound until new positive triggers emerged.
On Tuesday, PSX witnessed a volatile session, as the KSE-100 swayed in both directions before closing the day lower by over 800 points at 115,042.25.
Global stocks gained on Wednesday as a flurry of new policies from US President Donald Trump combined with robust corporate earnings to bolster investor optimism, while tariff uncertainty kept the dollar near two-week lows.
Netflix shares surged 14% in after-hours trading as the streaming giant added a record number of subscribers last quarter, enabling it to increase prices for most service plans in the United States and other countries.
That helped lift Nasdaq futures 0.5% in Asia. S&P 500 futures also rose 0.2%. Late on Tuesday, Trump announced that OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle will form a joint venture called Stargate and invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Shares of SoftBank surged 9% in Tokyo, while Oracle already gained 7% overnight.
Helping risk sentiment is also relief that Trump did not announce a more comprehensive sweep of tariffs at the start of his second presidency.
Many investors and foreign capitals had expected tariffs to be among a raft of executive orders Trump signed in his first day in office.
However, he did talk up the threat of tariffs again on Tuesday, vowing to hit the European Union with fresh levies.
He also said his administration was discussing imposing a 10% tariff on goods from China on Feb. 1.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani rupee remained largely stable against the US dollar, depreciating 0.01% in the inter-bank market on Wednesday. At close, the currency settled at 278.85 for a loss of Re0.03 against the greenback.
Volume on the all-share index decreased to 743.63 million from 767.27 million on Tuesday.
However, the value of shares increased to Rs35.24 billion from Rs31.83 billion in the previous session.
WorldCall Telecom was the volume leader with 100.22 million shares, followed by Cnergyico PK with 96.98 million shares, and Fauji Cement with 83.55 million shares.
Shares of 454 companies were traded on Wednesday, of which 93 registered an increase, 307 recorded a fall, while 54 remained unchanged.
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