STAFF REPORTER
KARACHI Following a phenomenal rally in the past week, bears once again clawed their way back to the Pakistan Stock Exchange, snapping a fourday winning streak to drag the index below the 31,000- point mark. After a brief open in the positive, the index dived more than 1,000 points as buying euphoria over the prime minister’s financial package faded amid mounting coronavirus cases. At close, the benchmark KSE-100 index recorded a decrease of 1,042.64 points, or 3.30%, to settle at 30,579.15.“Selling pressure kept mounting that brought the index down by 1,119 points during the session and it ended down by 1,043 points. Selling pressure was seen almost across the board. Exploration and production stocks held some ground and registered decent volumes in rangebound activity.” Sectors contributing to the performance included banks (down 297 points), fertiliser (143 points), cement (121 points), power (93 points) and oil and gas marketing companies (62 points). Stocks that contributed positively to the index were OGDC (up 33 points), Pakistan Tobacco (22 points), Bank AL Habib (10 points), Jubilee Life Insurance (6 points) and Standard Chartered Bank (4 points). Stocks that contributed negatively included HBL (down 80 points), MCB (71 points), Hubco (62 points), Engro (57 points) and UBL (56 points). Overall, trading volumes decreased to 233.3 million shares compared with Friday’s tally of 251.9 million. The value of shares traded during the day was Rs8.7 billion. Shares of 339 companies were traded. At the end of the day, 47 stocks closed higher, 278 declined and 14 remained unchanged
