After experiencing selling pressure in the last two trading sessions, positivity returned to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) with the benchmark KSE-100 Index closing with a gain of nearly 600 points on Thursday.
The KSE-100 witnessed some selling in the first half, hitting an intra-day low of 113,234.31.
However, buying was largely witnessed in the latter part of the day, taking the index to an intra-day high of 114,319.62.
At close, the benchmark index settled at 114,037.79, up by 594.36 points or 0.52%.
“The market sentiment was buoyed by recent foreign corporate buying, and cement stocks remained in focus,” brokerage house Topline Securities said.
Key contributors to the positive movement included ENGRO, PSO, FCCL, SEARL, and MLCF, which together added 309 points to the index, it added.
The recovery followed a sharp decline on Wednesday when the KSE-100 Index settled lower by nearly 1,600 points at 113,443.43 on late-session selling.
Globally, Asia shares rose on Thursday, helped by a jump in their Chinese counterparts on Beijing’s latest measures to shore up its crumbling stock market, while elsewhere, investors continued to have their eyes on US President Donald Trump’s policy plans.
China on Thursday announced a plan to guide hundreds of billions of yuan of new capital from state-owned insurers into stocks each year, in a sign of Beijing’s concern about sagging Chinese stocks, which surged on the back of the announcements.
The CSI300 blue-chip index advanced 1.47% shortly after the open, while the Shanghai Composite Index jumped 1.62%.
Trump on Tuesday said his administration was discussing a 10% punitive duty on Chinese imports because fentanyl is being sent from China to the U.S. via Mexico and Canada.
The big moves in Chinese stocks helped lift MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan up 0.11%, reversing its losses from earlier in the session.
Elsewhere, Japan’s Nikkei ticked up 0.47%.
In the broader market, global shares gave up some of the enthusiasm from Trump’s mammoth spending plans for artificial intelligence infrastructure that had turbocharged a rally in technology stocks.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani rupee recorded marginal improvement against the US dollar, appreciating 0.05% in the inter-bank market on Thursday. At close, the currency settled at 278.72 for a gain of Re0.13 against the greenback.
Volume on the all-share index decreased to 675.54 million from 743.63 million on Wednesday.
The value of shares declined to Rs30.47 billion from Rs35.24 billion in the previous session.
Cnergyico PK was the volume leader with 143.69 million shares, followed by WorldCall Telecom with 78.19 million shares, and Fauji Cement with 47.17 million shares.
Shares of 442 companies were traded on Thursday, of which 213 registered an increase, 181 recorded a fall, while 48 remained unchanged.