KARACHI: The bearish trend at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) intensified till midday on Friday as the benchmark 100-index dropped huge 655 points to reach 39583 points level.
Earlier, the PSX opened shedding 477 points and also lost 40,000 mark to reach 39760 points level in early trading.
On Thursday, the stocks witnessed another volatile session as the benchmark index, after making an intra-day high of 288 points and a low of 669 points, closed at 40,237 points, plummeting by 266 points.
This is the second time in a month that KSE 100-index ticked below the 40,000 mark to an intra-day low of 39,834 points (previously made a low of 39,870 points on 4th Oct’17).
Major negative contributors during the day were cement that shed 73 points, commercial banks that took away 57 points, and power generation and distribution that eroded 40 points. While some support was provided by oil & gas exploration companies that contributed 71 points and tobacco 18 points to the index respectively.
Average daily volumes increased by 6% DoD to 138m shares and average daily value traded settled at Rs6b/USD58m, surging by 13% DoD. Symbols of total 395 active companies participated in the session of which 306 closed in negative, only 73 finished in positive while 16 remained unchanged.