Trade at the Pakistan Stock Exchange opened on a bullish note with the benchmark KSE-100 Index breaching the 43,000 points level at 10 am on Friday, a level not seen since July 30, 2018. Investors' sentiment improved as chances of an Iran-US war got slimmer in the last couple of days, as evident from the previous day's gain of more than 1,100 points.

Markets across the world shed points following the assassination of a top Iranian commander in a US drone strike, leading to fears of a war between the two countries. Investors offloaded their stocks and parked their savings in safe havens like gold, which saw its price increase significantly. However, most analysts believed that was a temporary phenomenon and investors would return to capital markets once tensions between Iran and America eased. With a gain of more than 550 points, the market was hovering above the 43,000-point level when this report was filed (at 11:07am). Among the most active stocks were those of Bank of Punjab, Fauji Fertilizer, TRG, Hascol and Unity. The market has been giving a return of 6% this year (in the first 10 days of January) and 11% last year. Early Friday trade saw a volume of 155 million shares traded, the value of which comes to 7.6 billion

© Pakistan Press International, source Asianet-Pakistan