More rallies in store for the PSX?

Pakistan’s equity market ripped higher in 2024, carrying the KSE-100 index to its record peak as the economic fundamentals stabilised and the State Bank started cutting interest rates. The benchmark index climbed to 116,169 points on Dec 17 (before settling down to 110,246 points on Friday) from 64,661 points on Jan 1. This compares with the previous peak of around 52,000 points achieved in 2017. The stocks have gained much more rapidly after the announcement of the budget on June 12, when the index stood at 72,797 points, in the hope of anticipated approval of the new International Monetary Fund (IMF) funding programme of $7 billion. But Pakistan’s stock market wasn’t the only one rising during the outgoing year. Argentina’s stock market has surged 22-fold since July 2022 and Turkiye has also seen more than a four-fold increase in its equities compared to Pakistan’s two-fold rise, according to data collated by Ahmed Jamal Pirzada, a leading economist and Bristol professor.