Pakistan-Stock-Exchange-PSXThe Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) witnessed a bloodbath for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index shedding another 796.48 points (-1.74 percent) to close at 44,948.52 points. Overall, the market shed around 1,540 points during the last two sessions, mainly due to lack of triggers and rollover week. The market opened on a positive note and gained around 170 points during the first 10 minutes of the session; however, later a massive profit taking activity gripped the market that continued for the rest of the session. The KSE-100 Index moved in a range of 1,034.46 points, showing an intraday high of 45,915.61 points and a low of 44,881.15 points. Among other indices, the KSE All Share Index shed 496.97 points (-1.59 percent) to close at 30,812.18 points, while All Share Islamic Index shed 431.61 points (-1.94 percent) to close at 21,870.04 points. A total of 366 companies traded shares in the stock exchange, out of them shares of 53 closed up, shares of 300 closed down while shares of 13 companies remained unchanged. Out of 91 traded companies in the KSE-100 Index, 10 closed up, 80 closed down and one remained unchanged. The overall market volumes increased by 2.71 million to 264.61 million. Total volumes traded for the KSE-100 Index decreased by 9.87 million to 110.56 million shares. The number of total trades increased by 9,432 to 118,711, while the value traded decreased by Rs1.21 billion to Rs9.73 billion. Overall market capitalisation decreased by Rs124.43 billion. Among scrips, TRG topped the volumes with 19.63 million shares, followed by WTL (17.17 million) and BYCO (13.76 million). Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include TRG, WTL, BYCO, GTECH, and HASCOL, which formed around 29 percent of total volumes. The sectors taking the index toward south were technology & communication with 178 points, cement with 145 points, commercial banks with 94 points, oil & gas exploration companies with 64 points and oil & gas marketing companies with 44 points. The most points taken off the index were by SYS which stripped the index of 89 points followed by TRG with 80 points, LUCK with 37 points, MEBL with 37 points and OGDC with 30 points. The sectors taking the index toward north were tobacco with 3 points, insurance with 2 points and leasing companies with 1 points. The most points added to the index were by BAHL which contributed 14 points followed by EFUG with six points, and FML, MCB and MUREB with three points each. According to experts, a broader than expected policy rate hike by 150bps coupled with a swell in foreign debt to $3.8 trillion during the first four months of the current fiscal year weighed down on investors’ sentiments. They said that increase in interest rate is taking investors towards the treasury bond market as further increase in policy rate is not out of question. They added that any further increase in the interest rate might hit the equity market very hard.