The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed strong buying interest from the very start of trading on Monday, pushing the benchmark KSE-100 Index up by more than 1,000 points.
At 11:20 am, the benchmark KSE-100 Index was up by 1,002.68 points, or 0.59 percent, reaching 170,867.20 points. Robust buying was observed across key sectors, including automobile assemblers, cement, commercial banks, fertilizers, oil and gas exploration companies, oil marketing companies (OMCs), and power generation. Shares of K-Electric, OGDC, POL, PPL, PSO, SNGPL, SSGC, HBL, MEBL, NBP, and UBL were all trading in positive territory.
It is worth noting that strong buying momentum was also seen in the PSX last week, when the benchmark KSE-100 Index closed at a new all-time high of 169,864.53 points, up 1.7 percent for the week.
On the global front, Asian stocks declined in early trading on Monday. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell by 1 percent.
Meanwhile, S&P 500 E-mini futures rose by 0.3 percent, while the yield on the US 10-year Treasury bond was last down 1.2 basis points at 4.182 percent.
Markets are currently expecting the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates by 25 basis points to 0.75 percent, while the Bank of England is likely to cut rates by a similar margin to 3.75 percent. The European Central Bank, along with Sweden’s Riksbank and Norway’s Norges Bank, is expected to keep interest rates unchanged.
