Another 'market halt' at PSX: Bourse plunges over 1,700 points as coronavirus looms

• The index was closed at 35,956.69 points after the index witnessed a decline of 1,716.56 points and a percentage drop of 4.77 percent.
• The plunge comes amid reports of a rise in global coronavirus threat and plunge in oil prices affecting the investor sentiments.

The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) suffered yet another bloodbath, after the benchmark KSE-100 index lost over 1,700 points during the trading session on Thursday.

The KSE-100 index closed at 35,956.69 points, after the index witnessed a decline of 1,716.56 points and a percentage drop of 4.77 percent. The total volume of shares traded was 188,314,510. The development comes amid reports of a rise in global coronavirus threat and plunge in oil prices, that are negatively affecting the investors' sentiments.

At around 2:13 pm, the market halt was triggered as per PSX Regulations due to 4pc decline at the KSE-30 Index, just days after a similar measure was adopted during Monday's hammering.

The recent plunge comes days after ‘market halt’ was triggered as a standard protocol for risk management purposes, when on Monday, March 9, the KSE-100 index crashed by nearly six percent during intra-day trading, recording the largest daily slump in history.

The panic-induced selling caused the index to nosedive over 2,200 points in early trading. Upon imposition of market halt, all equity and equity-based derivative markets got suspended.

The three top traded companies were Bank of Punjab with a volume of 28,009,500 and price per share of 10.20 (-0.74), Fauji Cement Company Limited with a volume of 17,410,000 and price per share of 17.19 (-1.28), Maple Leaf Cement Factory Limited with a volume of 16,797,500 and price per share of 27.42 (-2.05).

Global markets nosedive

Furthermore, financial markets took the hammering on Thursday, as stocks dived and oil slumped after US President Donald Trump announced to ban travel from Europe to stem the spread of coronavirus, threatening more disruptions to trade and the world economy.

Euro Stoxx 50 futures plunged 8.3pc  to their lowest levels since mid-2016. US S&P 500 futures plummeted as much as 4.9pc, in Asia and last traded down 3.6pc, a day after the S&P 500 lost 4.89pc, leaving the index on the brink of entering the bear market territory, defined as a 20pc  fall from a recent top.

The World Health Organization (WHO) described the coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic for the first time on Wednesday as Britain and Italy announced multi-billion-dollar war chests to fight the disease.

The United States also said it was considering new steps to battle the virus that emerged in China in December and has spread around the world, halting industry, grounding flights, closing schools and forcing events to be postponed.

“We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction,” Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva.

In commodities, oil prices were hit by an intensifying price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, added by a sharp slowdown in the global economy. Meanwhile, OPEC slashed its forecast for global growth in oil demand this year due to the coronavirus outbreak and said more revisions might follow, underlining the deepening impact of the virus on the market days after a pact on output cuts collapsed.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries expects global demand to rise by just 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2020, a reduction of 920,000 bpd from its previous forecast, it said in a monthly report.

https://www.brecorder.com/2020/03/09/578387/bloodbath-in-psx-kse-100-indexloses-over-2200-points/