Key takeaways
- KATS is the electronic matching engine of the Pakistan Stock Exchange.
- It pairs compatible buy and sell orders and produces the trades you see on screen.
- Your broker routes orders into KATS, you do not log into KATS directly as a retail client.
What KATS is
The Karachi Automated Trading System is PSX's central electronic marketplace. It receives orders from member brokers and matches them according to price-time priority and exchange rules.
Without KATS, there would be no continuous, transparent public order book for listed equities in the modern PSX sense.
How your order gets there
When you place an order in a broker app, the broker's system validates it and sends it to the exchange. KATS then attempts to match it against resting orders on the other side.
A trade print is the result of a successful match. Until then, your order may sit as a bid or offer, be amended, or be cancelled.
What KATS does not decide
KATS does not decide whether a company is a good investment. It only enforces matching and market-structure rules, including session timings and price bands where applicable.
Settlement after the trade is handled through the clearing and settlement chain (NCCPL and related processes), not inside the matching engine itself.
FAQs
Is the last traded price set by KATS?
The last traded price is the price of the most recent matched trade on KATS. KATS does not invent prices; buyers and sellers do.
Can retail investors access KATS directly?
Retail clients access the market through licensed brokers. Brokers are the exchange members that connect to KATS.