Staff Reporter Karachi
The Pakistan Stock Exchange on Thursday extended gains in a topsy-turvy session and rose nearly 200 points as bulls locked horns with bears.
Investors remained optimistic owing to further appreciation of the rupee coupled with improvement in macroeconomic indicators following Saudi Arabian offer of assistance worth $4.2 billion to Pakistan.
Earlier, trading began with a spike and the benchmark KSE-100 index surpassed the 46,000-point mark in early hours.
The market, however, failed to sustain the gains due to panic over technical glitches in the new trading system deployed by the Pakistan Stock Exchange.
Looming fears of suspension of trading activity, similar to the one witnessed on Wednesday, sparked uncertainty, dragging the index down.
Investor sentiment revived in the second half of the session as fears subsided and they cherry-picked stocks later in the day.
At close, the benchmark KSE-100 index recorded an increase of 193.49 points, or 0.42%, to settle at 45,985.41.
