Trading commences on PSX after technical glitch resolved

Statement says in view of loss of trading time, market duration has been extended by 30 minutes to 5:00pm on Friday

KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) has finally resolved the technical fault that had kept traders from accessing the stock market in the first session of the day, it said in a statement released on Friday afternoon.

In view of the loss of trading time, the market duration has been extended by 30 minutes to 5:00pm on Friday, the statement said.

Earlier, traders were unable to access the market during the first trading session due to the fault in PSX’s IT network.

"Trading has yet to start on PSX because of a 'technical fault' in the exchange’s IT network," PSX Deputy Managing Director Haroon Askari told The Express Tribune on Friday at 11:20am.



“There is a technical fault and our IT staff is trying to fix it,” he said.

The first trading session in the regular market begins at 9:17am and ends at noon every Friday. The market remains closed for Friday prayers for two and a half hours and opens again at 2:32pm for the second session which ends at 4:30pm.

However, Askari said trading will not take place for the remainder of the first session as a result of the fault in the exchange’s IT network. “I’m sure the problem will be fixed soon and regular trading will commence with the beginning of the second session,” Askari added.

Meanwhile, he said that PUCARS, which is an automated web-based system for posting real-time announcements of listed companies about their financial status, directors’ meetings, company news and others, is fully operational.



The stock market saw marginal gains on Thursday on the back of financial and cement stocks despite poor performance by the exploration and production sector that knocked 69 points off the benchmark index.

At close, the Pakistan Stock Exchange’s (PSX) benchmark KSE 100-share Index recorded an increase of 34.01 points (0.09%) to end at 39,468.98. It extended the all-time high record achieved a day earlier.

Elixir Securities analyst Ali Raza said Pakistan equities closed marginally positive after the benchmark index traded volatile in a wide range of 400 points and lost all morning gains on profit-booking.