KARACHI - Profit-taking continued at the local equity market as investors remained nervous amid multiple unfavourable developments over economic front, as a result, KSE 100-index shed 48 points to close at 9,301 points on Thursday. Investors at the market remained concerned over NSS rates continuation while fall in local POL prices, rumours on RBS/MCB deal, limited foreign interest and high leverage cost remained a major reason for negative activity at the local bourse. Triple digit gain in the early hour pushed the equity market to stagnation, benchmark although did manage to maintain triple digit gains till midday, turnover came to a stand still, the investment company stocks however kept the momentum alive both on turnover and gains. The sectors those faced fierce pressure in previous session faced a renewed spell of selling on strength, stagnation added to the selling intensity, stagnation and absence of decent bids on dips added to the pressure and the benchmark started melting, with price erosion due to absence of buyers being the most prominent feature, while the local participants awaited two major announcements POL and ATRL of June closing. The local bourse started the day in green zone, up by 28.15 points while benchmark 100-index turned red during the session and witnessed days lowest level of 9,292.73 points on Thursday. However, market recovered from the deep loss and closed the day at 9,301.18 points with a loss of 48.50 points. Meanwhile, parallel KSE 30-index was unable to sustain the 10,000 points psychological level and closed at 9946.81 points with a loss of 85.04 points. Reduction in the local fuel prices, likely to provide space for reduction in local discount rates in the next review, approval of KL bill and rising trend in the international Oil prices initially arrested the declining trend at the local equity market, stated research analyst Hasnain Asghar Ali. Trading activity was depressing as the ready market volume decreased to 226.688 million shares as compared to last trading sessions 434.823 million shares. Total trading value of the stock exchange moved down to Rs 9.627b from Rs 15.466b of last session. Karachi market capitalisation squeezed to Rs 2.703tr against Rs 2.715tr of last trading session. Moreover, of 435 actively traded stocks at the KSE, only 188 gained value, 235 lost while the worth of 12 cos remained unchanged. JSCL was crowned as the volume leader of the day with a handsome turnover of 24.208 million shares, followed by PTCL with 11.933 million shares, TRG Pak 11.021 million shares, KESC 9.256m shares, AHSL 8.939 million shares, Pak Oilfields 8.538m shares, MyBank 8.004 million shares, NML 6.051 million shares, Pace Pak 5.957 million shares, JS Large Cap Fund 5.515 million shares namely. Prominent gainers at the KSE include Wyeth Pak, up by Rs43.36/share to close at Rs1,258.52 with the trading of only 192 shares on Thursday, Mari Gas added Rs12.16/share and its total value was improved to Rs255.38, Services Industries gained Rs11.86/share, closing at Rs249.22, Sanofi-Aventis up by Rs9.89/share and closed at Rs207.88, Hinopak Motors gained Rs9.46/share to close at Rs198.72. On the other hand, Bata Pak lost Rs25.65/share to close at Rs953.35, Siemens Pak Engineering down by Rs24.50/share and its value was decreased to Rs1390, Treet Corporation lost Rs13.35/share and closed at Rs293.40 with the trading of only 25 shares, MCB Bank down by Rs8.42/share, closing at Rs212.66, Exide Pak lost Rs5.76/share to close at Rs167.55.