PSX: Stocks shed over 1,000 points

Business Recorder reported heavy selling on the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Wednesday, with the KSE-100 index losing more than 1,000 points during the session. The slide came as worries about supply disruption grew after the US and Iran traded strikes overnight. At 12:45pm the index stood at 175,392.84, down 1,074.15 points or 0.61 per cent.

Declines were visible across banking, oil and gas exploration, cement, auto assembly, oil marketing and power generation. Heavyweights HUBC, MARI, OGDC, PPL, HBL, MCB, MEBL and NBP were all in negative territory. The benchmark had already shed 508.69 points on Tuesday, closing at 176,466.99 amid uncertainty over the US-Iran conflict and swings in global oil prices.

Global equities also weakened, with MSCI's Asia-Pacific index excluding Japan down 1.5 per cent, South Korea's KOSPI off more than 3 per cent and Japan's Nikkei 225 lower by 2.6 per cent. Wall Street closed lower overnight as rising government bond yields weighed on stocks, with the S&P 500 slipping 0.7 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite falling 1 per cent. Fed funds futures, cited by the CME Group's FedWatch tool, put the chance of a quarter-point rate rise at the September 16 meeting at 67 per cent, up from 39.6 per cent a week earlier.