KARACHI - Bloodbath activity was witnessed at Pakistan Stock Exchange on first trading day of the week, Monday, across the board on account of ongoing political noise. A great number of stocks hit their respective lower locks due to which KSE 100-index lost massive 1,855 points, which represented the biggest ever single-day decline in the history of the exchange, and closed at 47,672 points level.

Major contributors to the KSE-100 index were ENGRO (down 4.97pc), OGDC (5.00pc), HBL (3.27pc), HUBC (4.24pc) and LUCK (3.76pc), which cumulatively eroded 482 points from the index. OGDC, POL (up 4.94pc) and PPL (4.08pc) in the E&P sector lost value to close in the red trajectory as well. Commercial banks heavyweights including UBL (down 3.27pc), HBL and MCB (3.16pc) took away 240 points from the index.

Panic selling was witnessed at PSX after JIT issued summons to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to appear before it on June 15 under Panama case, stated analyst Ahsan Mehanti. Falling global crude prices, uncertainty in global equities and concerns for higher tax levies in the federal budget played a catalyst role in bearish close.

So far the month of June isn't turning out as market participants had envisioned a couple of weeks ago. No ‘pundit’ or ‘guru’ could have forecasted that the index would post two of the largest single-day point declines on record, that too within the same month. Today’s activity (-3.75pc) is likely due to panic selling from retail participants as JIT summoned the prime minister, while support in the form of institutional activity was thin, as they likely adopt a wait and see strategy, observed analyst Adnan Sami Sheikh at Topline Securities.

Foreigners were net buyers of $4.0 million, comprising of gross buy/sell $15.7/11.7 million, with $1.5 million net buying in cement. Market participation ticked up somewhat as volume rose by 5 percent whereas traded value increased 13 percent to Rs9.3 billion/$88.4 million.

Scrips of total 386 active companies participated in the session of which 349 finished in red, 26 in green while 11 remained unchanged. Volume leader for the day was WTL with 13 million shares of the company exchanging hands.