The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) turned bearish on Thursday, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index shedding 635.66 points (-1.43 percent) to close at 43,731.2 points. The market switched between the green and red territories for the first 10 minutes and then remained on the losing streak throughout the session, eroding over half of the previous day’s gains. The KSE-100 Index moved in a range of 784.74 points, showing an intraday high of 44,392.54 points and a low of 43,607.80 points. Among other indices, the KSE All Share Index shed 440.81 points (-1.45 percent) to close at 29,949.21 points, while KMI All Share Islamic Index shed 382.93 points (-1.74 percent) to close at 21,598.47 points. A total of 356 companies traded shares in the stock exchange, out of them shares of 92 closed up, shares of 253 closed down while shares of 11 companies remained unchanged. Out of 92 traded companies in the KSE-100 Index, 16 closed up and 76 closed down. The overall market volumes decreased by 86.02 million to 312.07 million shares. Total volumes traded for the KSE-100 Index decreased by 54.2 million shares to 124.15 million shares. The number of total trades decreased by 12,711 to 129,248, while the value traded increased by Rs1.53 billion to Rs10.12 billion. Among scrips, WTL topped the volumes with 49.187 million shares, followed by TELE (30.93 million) and BYCO (18.97 million). Stocks that contributed significantly to the volumes include WTL, TELE, BYCO, TRG, and UNITY, which formed around 42 percent of total volumes. According to experts, the bourse tumbled as the less-than-expected interest rate hike and the central bank’s forward guidance were disregarded by the market after the T-Bills target was missed and yields didn’t ease. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) raised Rs1,285 billion against the target of Rs1,400 billion at an auction held on Wednesday evening. The cutoff yields on three-month, six-month and 12-month remained unchanged at 10.79 percent, 11.5 percent and 11.51 percent, respectively. An analyst at Topline Securities said the profit-taking continued following the T-Bills auction where yields remained flat contrary to the investors’ expectations. “The investors were expecting a cut; following a fall in the secondary market yields by 25bps on Tuesday.” Arif Habib Corporation said that the stocks closed lower in the overbought market on the concerns over the SBP’s policy tightening and foreign outflows. Likely announcements of a mini-budget for the resumption of the International Monetary Fund programme and reports of the UK court imposing over Rs19.4 billion fine on Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) played a catalytic role in the bearish close.