KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange Wednesday dropped the early gains and lost 229.49 points to reach 40724.73 points level till midday.
Earlier, the stocks tried to recoup some points and added 36.51 points to reach 40990.73 points level in early trading.
On Tuesday, the negativity prevailed at the stock market on second consecutive day as the 100-share index shed another 328.50 points (0.80%) to close at 40,954.22 points amid rising political uncertainty.
The oil sector refused to follow the trend of global crude oil prices that traded comfortably above $50/barrel. Profit-taking was witnessed in the aforementioned sector, where OGDC (down 0.72%) and PSO (1.29%) were the biggest index movers of the sector. The cement sector was the major laggard of the day as the sector was down around 2.37% on the back of rising global coal prices. MLCF (down 4.02%) and LUCK (1.69%) were the major index movers of the cement sector.
Overall, volumes increased by 1.06% to 383m shares, while value rose by 1.5% to Rs13.1b/$125m. Of total 451 active companies in the market, 291 closed in red, 137 in green while 23 remained unchanged. BOP and TPL were the most traded scrips of the index with 52m and 19m shares respectively.