KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange and the KSE-100 Index underwent masses of plummet, diving over 1,750 points in early-day trading. By 10:30 AM, the index had lost 1.53% and was down to 113,117.11 points, carrying with wave-after-wave of sell-offs.
This comes as a sharp result of many factors, including escalating tensions between Pakistan and India following the latest attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, and the concerns of military escalation thereafter.
Pakistan's Information Minister, Attaullah Tarar, also fueled the market unease by asserting that his country had credible intelligence about India planning a military strike within 24 to 36 hours.
Tarar claimed the Pahalgam incident may serve as an example to carry out this attack. His comments created much uproar, mainly through a press conference and a post on social media, which stands in line with dropping confidence from investors and a sharp stock market fall as corollary.
The worldwide markets have been hurting sussing out a direction after oil prices fell amid worries about the US economy. While some initial relief over conceivable defusing of global trade tensions, pessimistic economic signals on weak earnings and fears of a US recession weighed down other assets.
US Treasury bonds have crept into multi-week lows over fears that Federal Reserve rate cuts will be forthcoming to ward off economic deceleration.
This means that the current market volatility is set to stay, given the continuous confrontation-and-increase-of-global economic tensions. Traders now will be looking for any signals to de-escalation or greater clarity of the situation to gauge their next move on the market.
[Source Credit: Business Recorder]
