KARACHI - Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed a bloodbath on first trading day of the new fiscal year, Monday, with the benchmark 100-share index losing massive 1,900 points, the biggest ever fall, due to ongoing political uncertainty, as Supreme Court directed JIT to complete Panama case probe into the Sharif family’s dealings abroad.

The index plunged 4.08 per cent, falling through the 45,000 level to close at 44,665.41 points. The market recorded the day's low at 44,639.82 points during the trading session, brokers said.

Previously when the 100-index had tanked 4% it was back in Aug’15 when China depreciated the Yuan & in Aug’14 due to the PTI Azadi March rally, observed analyst Adnan Sami Sheikh.

Yesterday’s performance was underpinned by across the board selling while institutions failed to provide support. It is likely that those currently in the market are trimming positions while those with liquidity likely believe that risk is too high for deployment.

Top 10 index point decliners were HBL (down 5%), UBL (5%), LUCK (5%), OGDC (5%), MCB (5%), ENGRO (4.1%), HUBC (4.7%), DGKC (4.8%), FFC (4.1%) & PSO (4.8%); bleeding 881 points. Banks shed 496 points, cement 256 points, fertilizers 232 points, E&P 189 points, and OMCs 138 points. ITTEFAQ fell 4.8% on its first day of trading; while such a price move in this market wasn’t surprising.

Panic selling was witnessed at PSX on investor fears over outcome of JIT interrogations of PM family. Stocks fell across the board on political uncertainty as SC directed JIT to complete Panama case probe, stated analyst Ahsan Mehanti.

Weak global crude prices, concerns for higher taxation on corporate sector and dismal economic data on exports played a catalyst role in record fall at PSX, he added. Participants sat on the bench as volumes plummeted 34% to 157m shares, while traded value declined 6% to Rs8.8b/$84.3m.

Scrips of total 359 active companies participated in the session of which 326 finished in red, only 21 in green while 12 remained unchanged. Volume leader for the day was EPCL (down 5%) with 10.5m shares of the company exchanging hands.