Lahore Stock Exchange was founded in October 1970 in the busy area of Bank Square in Lahore, Pakistan. It was formed under the Securities and Exchange Ordinance in Pakistan. There were originally 83 Punjab members but 25 years later, in 2004, there were a total of 650 members. The Lahore Stock Exchange has in fact become so popular that they have now opened 2 further branches in Faisalabad and Sialkot.

At first the Lahore Stock Exchange had very few active members and there were only two opportunities to trade; the first was to trade through the Karachi Stock Exchange or trade only in Bonus, Vouchers and Bonds. This was mainly due to constraints from the size of the building and in just under 20 years, the Lahore Stock Exchange was moved to its present location at 19-Khayaban-e-Aiwan-e-Iqbal, Lahore. Since then both the industry of Pakistan and the Stock Exchange itself have gone from strength to strength, due to the coincidental time of the move; the relocation coincided with the Pakistan government accepting a market economy and heightened deregulation.

The advance of the Lahore Stock Exchange.

In recent years there have been a great many advances in the Lahore Stock Exchange. Business has seen a steady boom, a new Management Information System has been introduced and electronic clearing house activities as well as electronic purchasing are now being used.

The future of the Lahore Stock Exchange.

Many believe that this modernization and increasing growth will eventually take its toll on the Lahore Stock Exchange and managers have only just been able to keep control of it through the introduction of modern technologies. The fact is, a greater physical space will need to be introduced again in the near future and a ‘Construction Committee’ has been introduced to this end.

Day trading only began at the Lahore Stock Exchange back in 1993 and the owners of the stock exchange along with the Construction Committee now aim to transform it from a local organization into a global player in the stock market. They began to implement large scale modernization in 1994 in order to keep up with the growth of the stock exchange and so far they have completed this admirably; they aim to keep expanding and improving until they are stable and technologically advanced enough to take part in the world stock exchange.

The Lahore Stock Exchange.

Because of the already improved technology and implementation of new techniques coupled with the expected and planned growth the Lahore Stock Exchange is set to become a serious player and many areas of the world are already sitting up and paying attention to their progress. They offer the usual statistics and services that many of the world’s larger and longer established stock exchanges can offer, so it only seems a matter of time before they are competing but all of this is assuming that they can cope with the changes and growth they will need to go through.