In a dramatic market meltdown, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) was forced to halt trading on Thursday after its frontline KSE-100 index plunged by 7.2%. The fall triggered automatic circuit breakers, marking the steepest single-day drop in over two years. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Karachi-30 Index has fallen 10% in just two trading sessions.
This comes just a day after markets were rattled by panic selling in response to India’s Operation Sindoor — a precision military strike on terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir following the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 civilians.
Although the PSX had shown signs of early recovery on Thursday, surging by 1.7% during opening trades, those gains were erased by midday. By 1 PM, the market saw a sharp sell-off, leading to a 7.2% crash and subsequent halt in trading.
On Wednesday, the KSE-100 index had already tanked 5.78%, or 6,560.82 points — one of the worst single-day declines in PSX’s history. The back-to-back plunges highlight growing investor anxiety over regional instability and the risk of prolonged geopolitical conflict.
In stark contrast, Indian equity markets remained resilient. On Thursday, the BSE Sensex rose 88.92 points to 80,835.70, while the Nifty50 hovered around 24,421.75 — reflecting investor confidence in India’s internal stability despite the regional tensions.
