Selling pressure was witnessed at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) as the benchmark KSE-100, feeling the effect of deeper political turmoil, witnessed a decrease of over 450 points on Tuesday after the arrest of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf(PTI) Chairman Iman Khan by law enforcement agencies outside the Islamabad High Court (IHC).
The benchmark KSE-100 Index saw a sharp fall at around 2:30pm when reports first surfaced that the PTI chairman and former prime minister was arrested in the Al-Qadir Trust Case by National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
Across-the-board selling was witnessed among the index-heavy sectors including, automobile, cement, chemical, commercial banks, oil & gas exploration companies and OMCs trading in the negative zone.
At close on Tuesday, the KSE-100 Index settled at 41,373.81 level, a decrease of 455.68 points or 1.09%.
Sectors driving the benchmark index downwards included banking (109.45 points), oil and gas exploration (78.30 points) and fertilizer (56.31 points).
Volume on the all-share index rose to 203.1 million from 179.1 million on Monday, while the value of shares traded increased to Rs5.85 billion from Rs4.76 billion recorded in the previous session.
WorldCall Telecom was the volume leader with 31 million shares followed by National Bank with 10.6 million shares and K-Electric Limited with 8.3 million shares.
Shares of 329 companies were traded on Tuesday, of which 73 registered an increase, 245 recorded a fall and 11 remained unchanged.
