KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) keeps scaling new heights for the ninth successive session, with over 1,000 points added to push the market past 110,000.
The benchmark KSE-100 had jumped by 1,067.74 points or 0.96 percent to a level of 110,121.69 points from the last closed level of 109,053.95.
In the last two weeks, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) has recorded two maximum increase points in a single day’s trading. This week, the massive inflows from mutual funds pushed the index to a record-high weekly gain of 7,697 points, apart from the last two.
Commenting on the market just keeps going higher to higher, research director of Chase Securities Yousuf M. Farooq said that now interest rates that were at historic highs returned to normal levels and this development had dramatically brought stock valuations to more reasonable levels.
He was of the opinion that market interest rates, which stood more than 20,5% in June 2024, are now around 12%.
Furthermore, the prospects of interest rate cuts in the Monetary Policy Committee session of December 16 have also increased.
Yousuf M. Farooq said he expected this rally to normalise future long-term market returns, and he expected that investors would start achieving future returns near the long-term historical average.
But he said banks began under pressure Monday due to reports in the media which indicated that the government was looking for new ways to tax banks which already assess a very high proportion of their income, as reported by Dawn.
This has improved macroeconomic indicators and boosted inflation cut down to 4.9 percent, which is the lowest level since 2017.
