Apparently Pakistans capital market fell significantly during the week ended on Friday last but insiders believe that it were foreign investors who abandoned the local stocks after rapid geo-political changes on the global scenario which impacted portfolio investments negatively. According to the traders, two psychological factors were impacting the sentiment on bourses. The local factor turning the trade as volatile was the issue of capital gain tax. Similarly external scenario of Western powers rallying against Islamic countries including Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey have forced foreign players to reshuffle, if not offload, their portfolios in Pakistani stocks. Initially local players lured by the Governments assurance to exempt shares bought by June 30, 2010 from capital gain tax rushed to register fresh buying in solid stocks. Resultantly, the market bettered by a little above one and half percentiles of the indexed value on Monday last. The bullish spree short-lived and positive sentiment failed to sustain in the second session of the week that was. After staying neck and neck bears overpowered the bulls and the countrys mother bourses benchmark slipped by a third percentile at the end of the session on Tuesday last. By midweek the bears penetrated the market that started shedding value in panic. Cautious buying on part of the foreign investors on Wednesday last helped the market clip the losses of the day a little less than a percentile. Thursday that was the second last session of the week under review was a bad day for stocks as the brokers and other players had learnt about Parliamentary opposition to the proposal of exempting stocks bought before June 30. Foreigners, too, marked it as right time to offload their stocks. They rather preferred to book margins from short selling in a plummeting market. Eventually the Karachi Stock Exchanges KSE-100 Index had to shed by over three percent in one go during the second last session of the week that was. Oversold market again attracted fresh buying during the last session of the week. On Friday last both foreign and local investors picked up stocks available at extremely trimmed prices. Therefore, short covering and fresh buying at lows helped the market recover part of the losses it had suffered during the rest of the week. Thus it bettered by almost a percentile leaving a challenge for the analysts to predict the future direction of the market. Analysts generally believe that the market ending a week on a positive note was not a good omen for the following week. Players were weird of domestic political uncertainties emanating from hearings of two critical cases one on defunct as well as notorious National Reconciliation Ordinance and the other on 18th Constitutional Amendment by the apex court. Apart from these two cases, the allegations of corruption, of late, levelled by a notable US Senator John Carry is another face of lethal stigma haunting the incumbent regime of the PPP.