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KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) plunged once again today (Thursday), as rising COVID-19 cases within and outside Pakistan continued to rattle investor sentiment, pushing the benchmark index down over 600 points.
Indices slipped lower and lower all day long while volumes increased from last session. Losing 704.57 points the KSE-100 index touched an intraday low of 40,492.75. It settled lower by 632.77 points at 40,564.55 points.
Among other indices, the KMI 30 index declined by 1,126.87 points ending at 64,977.6, while the KSE All-share index closed at 28,448.21 down by 415.95 points.
Overall market volumes surged from 244.26 million shares to 328.01 million shares. Shares worth Rs 11.31 billion were traded today. Unity Foods Limited (UNITY -3.37%), Soneri Bank Limited (SNBL +6.84%) and TRG Pakistan Limited (TRG -4.95%) led the volume chart.
Sectors dragging the KSE 100 index lower included Banking sector (133.72 points), Oil and Gas Exploration sector (117.49 points) and Cement sector (82.64 points). Company-wise, Habib Bank Limited (HBL 42.84 points), Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDC 42.82 points) and Pak Petroleum Limited (40.58 points) were top negative contributors.
The Refinery sector lost 5.47% in its cumulative market capitalization. Attock Refinery Limited (ATRL 7.41%), Pakistan Refinery Limited (PRL 7.15%), National Refinery Limited (NRL 6.94%) and Byco Petroleum Pakistan Limited (BYCO 4.24%) all closed negative.