Trading at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) opened in the negative zone on Wednesday due to weak market sentiment, causing the benchmark KSE-100 Index to shed more than 600 points in the opening moments.
In the morning, the benchmark index dropped by 665.22 points or 0.40%, reaching 166,977.05 points.
Selling pressure was observed across major sectors including automobile assemblers, cement, commercial banks, fertilizer companies, oil and gas exploration firms, OMCs, and power generation. Major heavyweights such as HUBCO, Mari, OGDC, POL, PPL, PSO, SNGPL, HBL, MEBL, and NBP were seen trading in the negative zone.
It is worth noting that the PSX witnessed an overall bearish trend on Tuesday, as major indices, sectoral benchmarks, and futures contracts came under pressure due to persistent profit-taking. The benchmark KSE-100 Index had closed at 167,642.28 after losing 419.92 points.
On the other hand, Asian markets showed slight stability on Wednesday, supported by an overnight recovery on Wall Street, as selling pressure in global bond markets and cryptocurrencies eased.
Bitcoin regained the $90,000 level, while Nasdaq and S&P 500 futures rose by 0.1%.
The MSCI Asia-Pacific index (excluding Japan) recorded an increase of 0.3%, while Japan’s Nikkei Index climbed 0.8%.
