KARACHI – April 8, 2025 — Trading at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) was suspended for an hour after the benchmark KSE-100 index nosedived over 6,200 points in the morning session, triggering a market halt. When trading resumed, the index dropped further, closing down 8,429.49 points or 7.1%, marking the steepest single-day decline in PSX history.
The crash followed a global sell-off after China imposed retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., stoking fears of a global recession. Analysts noted that the automatic market halt was triggered at 11:58am after a 5% drop in the KSE-30 index, with trading resuming at 1:03pm.
“This was a historic day-on-day decline,” Arif Habib Limited said, while Topline Securities’ CEO Mohammed Sohail and AKD Securities’ Awais Ashraf pointed to global uncertainty and recession fears as key drivers of the plunge.
