Global Stock Exchanges - Stocks gain slightly in volatile trading.

The stock market underwent a volatile ride on Friday, hitting intraday low of 41,064.54 points before cherry-picking helped it recover. The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) opened up on the back of positive expectations about the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting. Later, the FATF decided to keep the country on grey list until February 2021 as the watchdog found that Pakistan had successfully complied with 21 out of 27 points of action. The benchmark KSE-100 index, however, failed to sustain the bullish momentum and continued to drop as investors resorted to profit-booking towards the end of first session on news of rising coronavirus cases.

At close, the benchmark KSE-100 index recorded an increase of 66.98 points, or 0.16 percent, to settle at 41,266 points. Sectors contributing to the performance included cement (+92 points), insurance (+20 points), fertiliser (+13 points), banks (-31 points), exploration and production (-18 points) and power (-11 points). Individually, stocks that contributed positively to the index included Lucky Cement (+25 points), Engro Corporation (+19 points), Cherat Cement (+19 points), Maple Leaf Cement (+13 points) and Kohat Cement (+10 points). Stocks that contributed negatively were Bank AL Habib (-18 points), Hubco (-18 points)...