Despite a big surge in early trading, the Pakistan Stock Exchange took a big hit on Tuesday as the KSE-100 Index shed 310.56 points and closed at 41,985.19.

But the losses suffered by the stock exchange were also accompanied by a 56-paisa surge by the US dollar in the currency market as its inter-bank rate climbed to Rs166.43.

Soon after the session started at 9:30am, the index climbed to 42,528.49 after gaining over 300 points. However, the trend could not be sustained as the index entered the negative territory for the first time around 10:20am during the day.

But later in the afternoon, everything went wrong ending up in huge losses as the KSE-100 Index also fell below the psychological barrier of 42,000 points during the process.

However, the market regained confidence and started moving in the right direction in July and August.

A total of 514,878,894 shares were traded on Tuesday. With 376 companies offering their shares for trade, the share values of 246 tumbled and of 112 made gains. There was no change in share prices of the remaining 18.

The overall trend can be gauged by the fact that the share prices of eight companies out of the top 10 in terms of trading volume were down, including the first four on the list.

Hence, Hascol Petroleum Limited had 134,038,500 shares but its share price was down by 7.47 percent. Similarly the next two companies – Pakistan International Bulk Terminal Limited and Power Cement Limited – saw the trading of 66,005,500 and 58,050,000 shares respectively. But their share prices down by 1.74 percent and 4.42 percent. 
On the other hand, the three worst performers in terms of shedding their share prices were Modaraba Al-Mali, Kohinoor Industries Limited and Media Times with a respective cut of 15.49 percent, 10.69 percent and 9.88 percent.
However, the biggest gainer of the day was Drekkar Kingsway Limited with a 25 percent increase in its share price. It was followed by Service Fabrics Limited 13.37 percent and KASB Modaraba 12.50 percent.
As a whole, the commercial banks, pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas, chemical and power sectors were among the worst-performing sectors.
The latest losses mean that the overall gains made by the KSE-100 Index so far this month have now been reduced to 1,039.37. 
Since the start of July, the share market has managed to successfully cut the losses suffered earlier in March when the index was down by over 11,000 points. The next three months saw some progress but there was nothing significant.