KSE-100 index settles at 42,001.34 points with an increase of 0.33%.
Remittance receipts motivate investors to assume fresh positions.
Bullish investor spirits helped the index end the day on a positive note.
KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) resumed its upward march on Tuesday aided by strong economic cues and encouraging remittance data.
Resultantly, the KSE-100 index breached the psychological barrier of 42,000 points.
Investors weighed sentiments on encouraging remittances reading, which clocked-in at $2.7 billion in August 2022. The strong receipts motivated investors to assume fresh positions.
The KSE-100 index spiked as soon as trading began and gained nearly 200 points, however, the momentum was broken as investors resorted to profit-booking that erased a few of the gains by the end of the session. Bullish investor spirits helped the index end the day on a positive note.
At close, the benchmark KSE-100 index settled at 42,001.34 points with an increase of 139.05 points, or 0.33%.
Arif Habib Limited in its post-market commentary noted that another range-bound session was witnessed at the PSX today.
“The market opened in a positive zone and continued to trade in a consolidated range as investor’s participation remained dull throughout the day due to weakening Pakistani rupee against the US dollar,” it said.
However, in the last trading hour value buying was noticed.
Sectors contributing to the performance included banks (+75 points), automobile assemblers (+35.7 points), cement (+33.5 points), power (+22 points), and textile (+8.5 points).
Shares of 324 companies were traded during the session. At the close of trading, 145 scrips closed in the green, 151 in the red, and 28 remained unchanged.
Overall trading volumes soared to 118.51 million shares compared with Monday’s tally of 161.42 million. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs3.87 billion.
Hascol Petroleum was the volume leader with 10.21 million shares traded, gaining Rs0.21 to close at Rs6.81. It was followed by K-Electric with 6.92 million shares traded, losing Rs0.01 to close at Rs3.21 and Quice Food Industries with 5.41 million shares traded, gaining Rs0.66 to close at Rs4.53.
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will release its monetary policy on Monday.
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the SBP will convene on the first day of the following week to make decisions on monetary policy.
The Monetary Policy decision will be announced by Governor SBP Jameel Ahmad at a news conference on the same day after the MPC meeting, according to an official release.
In December, the central bank reduced policy rates by 200 basis points (bps) to 13 percent.
“In November 2024, headline inflation fell to 4.9 percent year on year, meeting the MPC’s estimates. This decrease was mostly caused by the ongoing decline in food inflation and the phasing out of the impact of the gas tariff increase in November 2023,” SBP stated in an official release.
“However, the Committee noted that core inflation, at 9.7 percent, is proving to be sticky, while consumer and business inflation expectations remain volatile.” To that end, the Committee restated its previous assessment that inflation may remain volatile in the short term before stabilizing within the target range.
“At the same time, growth prospects have slightly improved, as evidenced by a recent increase in high-frequency indicators of economic activity.” Overall, the Committee concluded that its approach of gradual policy rate decreases is keeping inflationary and external account pressures under control while promoting long-term economic growth.
During his attendance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has met with officials of organisations and leaders of many nations. Bangladesh’s Chief Advisor, Muhammad Younas, met with Mohammad Aurangzeb. On the fringes of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2025 Opening Banquet, there was an informal meeting. Additionally, the Finance Minister met with Anwar Ibrahim, the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Both leaders discussed economic cooperation and bilateral ties. Muhammad Aurangzeb also had a meeting with Dp World’s Rizwan Soomro and Yuvraj Narayan. They talked about how to strengthen Pakistan’s logistics and infrastructure systems to support trade. “The Pakistani government is committed to advancing joint projects and values partnerships in both business-to-business and business-to-government cooperation,” the finance minister added.