The Pakistan Stock Exchange lacks consistency and is unpredictable. It was proven yet again on Monday when the market experienced a spectacular nosedive during the final stretch of the session as the KSE-100 Index plunged to 40,209.82 after losing 588.61 points.

After regaining some of the lost ground by accumulating over 1,700 points in the last four business of the past week, the latest loss meant that the share prices of 268 companies were down with a total of 365 entities available for trading.

However, 80 companies managed to see their value going up while there was no change in the value of 17 during a session where the total volume stood at 377,458,417 shares.

The latest poor show came after the market bounced back last week following the loss of 1,499.01 points from Oct 1 to Oct 5.

Amid this uncertainty, the KSE-100 Index is still below the 42,647.35 mark – the highest point reached on Sept 10 after the spectacular slide in March this year – mainly thanks to the sustained recovery seen in July and August.

On March 25, the KSE-100 Index was dipped to 27,228.80 with an over 12,000 points tumble in March. But the market had been witnessing a negative trend even before that after reaching the level of 43,207.05 on Jan 10.

The Monday selloff meant that the share prices of seven out of the top 10 most active stocks were down, including Power Cement Limited which shed 5.25 percent of its value. It had 50,575,500 shares traded.

Hascol Petroleum Limited was the second most active stock with 41,844,833 shares, but it too suffered a 6.35 percent reduction in value. The third placed TRG Pakistan Limited shed 6.88 percent of its price after the trading of 23,441,500 shares.     

With a 45.83 percent cut in its share price, Askari Life (R) proved to be the worst performer. It was followed by First Fidelity Leasing Modaraba 17.95 percent and Ghazi Fabrics International Limited 14.23 percent.

Meanwhile, First Paramount Modaraba, Samin Textiles Limited and First Elite Capital Modaraba were the three worst performers with their share prices reduced by 12.28 percent, 11.45 percent and 11.28 percent respectively.