KARACHI: Pakistan equities on Monday witnessed the third largest daily decline of the year 2018 with benchmark KSE100 Index settling below 39,300 points level, down 2.5 percent or 996 points. Politics was much to blame for Monday’s fall as sentiments were dented after Supreme Court barred key politicians and bankers from traveling abroad due to their possible involvement in money laundering. 123.5Traded volumes increased by 19 percent over previous day’s session to 123 million shares, while value traded increased to Rs 5.3 billion. Volume leaders were K-Electric with 11.9 million shares traded, Bank of Punjab with 8.4 million shares traded and Lotte Chemical with 5.8 million shares traded. Moreover, increasing uncertainty over macros and persistent selling by local asset managers added to market plight. Declines were broad-based with 4.1 percent loss in cement sector, 4 percent in Pharmas, -and 2.8 percent loss in banking scrips denting benchmark Index the most. An equity analyst Muhammad Arbash expects political noise leading up to the General Elections and prevailing weak macros to keep any meaningful recovery in check in the near-term. Negative sentiments were witnessed in the cement sector where all major cement scrips including Lucky Cement, DG Khan Cement, Maple Leaf Cement and Bestway Cement closed in the red zone. Similarly, overall downfall was seen in financials where major banking scrips including Habib Bank Limited (HBL), MCB Bank, Bank of Punjab, National Bank of Pakistan closed in the red, while only the Bank Islami managed to close in green. Shares of 30 companies surged while shares of 286 companies went down amongst total 334 companies’ shares traded on Monday. Published in Daily Times, July 10th 2018.