KARACHI: Tremors from the Middle East conflict have jolted the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) as it was hammered by an historic plunge the moment it opened for business on Monday till the end of the business.
The PSX which was closed over the weekend when the US and Israeli forces launched attack on Iran and assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, nosedived in the first hour of trading by about mammoth 15,000 points.
The PSX’s benchmark KSE-100 index fell like a house of cards and after one hour of business, it lost 16,089.17 points or 10.59 percent to 151,972.99 points.
The equity market witnessed a strong selloff in early trade on Monday, as escalating geopolitical tensions in Middle East weighed on already cautious sentiment amid foreign capital outflows and uncertainty over global developments.
Within the first few minutes of trading, investors lost billions and billions of rupees.
Only five of the 567 companies traded so far were in plus territory and 179 were unchanged while remaining 383 were on the losing side.
Following the nearly 11% drop, trading activity at PSX was halted and reopened at 10.22am but the dull situation persisted.
Across-the-board selling was observed in key sectors, including automobile assembler, cement, commercial banks, fertiliser, oil and gas exploration, OMCs, power generation and refinery. Index-heavy stocks, including HBL, MCB, MEBL, MARI, OGDC, POL, PPL, HUBCO, ARL, traded in the red.
During the previous week, the PSX had remained under sustained pressure, as rising geopolitical tensions and domestic security concerns continued to weigh heavily on investor sentiment, extending the benchmark index’s correction from its January peak despite a partial recovery toward the end of the week on improving diplomatic signals.
The benchmark KSE-100 Index at the PSX had declined by 5,107.53 points, or 2.9% week-on-week, to close at 168,062.17 points.
