KSE-100 gains over 300 points as buying returns to Pakistan Stock Exchange

Buying interest returned to the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index gaining more than 300 points in the opening minutes of trading. At 9:35am the index was at 170,749.97, up 324.35 points, or 0.19%. Buying was reported in automobile assemblers, cement, commercial banks, fertiliser, oil and gas exploration companies and oil marketing companies. Index-heavy stocks including HBL, MCB, MEBL, NBP, ARL, NRL, MARI, POL, SSGC and SNGPL were trading in the green. This is an intraday update.

The move follows a weaker session on Monday, when the KSE-100 closed down 339.60 points, or 0.20%, at 170,425.62 in range-bound trade. Sentiment at the time was described as fragile amid heightened Middle East geopolitical uncertainty, after media reports that US President Donald Trump had rejected an Iranian ceasefire proposal concerning the Strait of Hormuz.

On the policy side, the government briefed the visiting International Monetary Fund review mission on Monday that the Gulf War and disruption in the Strait of Hormuz had caused revenue loss in the first quarter and slowed economic activity. The government also informed the mission that around 10,000 federal government employees will be required to digitally declare their movable and immovable assets by October 30, 2026 as part of a mandatory asset declaration regime.

Globally, oil prices and bond yields were higher — a combination described as uncomfortable for Asian equities — as investors braced for an interest rate hike in Australia and an environment in which short-term borrowing costs settle at their highest for years. The benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield spiked overnight to a 19-year high above 5.27%, a rise of nearly 50 basis points through September, with the monthly selloff the heaviest in two years. The US 2-year yield has moved further, rising more than 57 basis points this month to the threshold of 5%, as traders position for US growth and inflation to drive three more Federal Reserve rate hikes by the middle of next year.

Overnight, a $150 billion increase to chipmaker Nvidia's buyback plan lifted its share price and held the rates-sensitive Nasdaq to a fall of 0.9%. In Asia, bond markets in Japan, South Korea and Australia traded under pressure and most regional equity markets slipped. Fragile sentiment in China's technology sector, where stocks were hit on Monday by US plans to ban Chinese components from data centres, left the blue-chip CSI300 index pinned to a one-year low.