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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) plunged on Wednesday as investors resorted to profit booking and dumped stocks.
In line with the market expectations, Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) announced to bring down Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) among lesser advanced economies into Frontier Markets (FM) index with effect from December 1, 2021.
It was classified in MSCI’s leading Emerging Markets (EM) index since May 2017 when the benchmark KSE-100 Index hit an all-time high of 53,000 points, but the country failed to sustain the level and the index never returned to that high level since then. The bourse reacted to the news as investors dumped stock and several index heavyweights including oil, automobile and cement sectors faced hefty selling.
The KSE-100 index increased in early trading and reached its highest level of 46,875.49 points. It soon witnessed a downward trajectory and dropped throughout the day. The index dropped 333.25 points (-0.71%) and closed at 46,396.71 points. The total volume of shares was 143.551 million valued at Rs6.730bn.
The lower-bench KSE-30 index also decreased by 187.41 points (-1.00%) and closed at 18,559.63 points. The total volume of shares was 33.327 million. The KMI-30 index plunged by 1,008.44 points (-1.32%) and closed at 75,461.88 points, while the All-Share Index declined by 192.47 points (-0.60%) and closed at 31,926.68 points.
The most active stock was TPL Holdings (TPL 0.95%) which saw 39.045 million shares traded at the stock market. This was followed by Telecard Ltd (TELE 7.14%), Ghani Global Ltd (GGL 7.49%) and Pakistan International Airlines Corp (PIAA -2.56%). The total volume of scripts was 37.429 million, 35.372 million, and 31.866 million respectively.
Earlier in June 2021, MSCI proposed to downgrade PSX into Frontier Markers (FM) from Emerging Markets (EM) as share prices (market capitalisation) at PSX maintained on a downturn since 2017 and completed its consultation in with market participants including global investors till August 31, 2021.
MSCI will reclassify the MSCI Pakistan Indexes from Emerging Markets to Frontier Markets in one step, coinciding with the November 2021 Semi-Annual Index Review (SAIR). It is scheduled to hold the SAIR on November 11, 2021 while the review decision would come into effect from December 1, 2021,
