Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) maintained a bullish trend on account of positive economic indicators and relative stability on the political front, as the benchmark index crossed the 86,000 level during intra-day trading on Monday.

At 1:55pm, the benchmark index was hovering at 86,075.51 level, an increase of 825.42 points or 0.97%.

Across-the-board buying was witnessed in key sectors including automobile assemblers, cement, chemical, commercial banks, fertilizer, oil and gas exploration companies, OMCs and refinery traded in green.

Index-heavy stocks including OGDC, PPL, HBL, NBP, EFERT, HUBCO traded in green.

Experts attributed the buying rally to positive economic indicators including the expectation of a lower inflation reading this month.

“The market is expecting a CPI reading of below 7% in October,” said Saad Hanif, analyst at Ismail Iqbal Securities.

“However, the latest adjustment in electricity tariff may lead to an uptick in inflation,” he added.

The analyst was of the view that development on the political front is also boosting market confidence.

The National Assembly (NA), after weeks of political negotiations, passed the 26th Amendment Bill, a judiciary-related constitutional package, in the wee hours on Monday.

During the previous week, PSX witnessed a mixed trend after moving in both directions and finally closed on a negative note. The benchmark KSE-100 index declined by 233.31 points on week-on-week basis and closed at 85,250.09 points.

The foreign investors also remained on the selling side and withdrew $11.614 million from the local equity market. Total market capitalization increased by Rs21 billion to Rs11.177 trillion.

Globally, Asian shares dipped in and out of positive territory on Monday, under pressure from weakness in Chinese stocks, but bitcoin scaled a three-month peak as “Trump trades” continued to ramp up.

Gold hit another record high on conflict in the Middle East and an extremely close U.S. presidential election, with the yellow metal expected to stay in favour among much global uncertainty.

Optimism over Beijing’s slew of stimulus measures first announced late in September has turned into caution in recent days as investors look to further details of more fiscal support from policymakers.

Equities in Hong Kong were last down 0.6%, while China’s blue-chip index swung between losses and gains. It last traded 0.4% higher, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.36%.

That capped gains in MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan which were last up a marginal 0.11%, a step back in sentiment after U.S. stocks posted a sixth straight week of gains on Friday.

This is an intra-day update