KARACHI: The Pakistan bourse quickly recovered after starting off with a bearish note as the KSE-100 index witnessed an increase of 402.17 points, or 0.87 per cent, in the first hour of trading on Friday.

The local equity market on Thursday finished lower as resumption in rupee’s downtrend against the dollar dampened the market sentiment and aided the selling pressure. Lack of news flows related to progress in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) restrained the market from posting gains.

“Positive sentiments in the market prevailed as the speculations of policy rate to not see a major hike as was expected but may see an increase of around 1 per cent, is giving confidence to the investors in the market,” Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp said.

“The slight recovery of international oil market prices is also driving the local market toward the bullish note,” he added.