KARACHI, Dec 31: The Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) 100-share index suffered one of the biggest single session fall of 696.83 points or 4.71 per cent in its trading history on Monday on panic-selling, triggered by economic worries and fears of law and order situation and violence after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto last week.

“The investors’ reaction to the sophisticated killing of Benzair Bhutto was natural as they shared grief of Bhutto family, but it was certainly not the battle of wits between the bulls and bears,” said a leading analyst Hasnain Asghar Ali.But he ruled out the possibility of another major shakeout as market has the capacity to fight back in sudden shocks on the strength of its positive fundamentals, including corporate earnings.

But Ahsan Mehanti thinks the absence of foreign investors for quite some time in the backdrop of current negative developments could take its toll if the financial institutions did not launch a rescue operation.

At one stage, after falling well over 700 points, it finally managed to finish around 14,075.83 as compared to 14,772.08 at the last weekend, eroding a massive amount of Rs213.258 billion from the market capital at Rs4,330 billion. Its junior partner, 30-share index crashed by 861.68 points at 16,717.10 points on active selling in the leading base shares.

The previous single session record crash of 635.80 points or 4.57 per cent was recorded on Nov 5 after the imposition of emergency followed by rumours of top changes in the army.

All the leading shares finished with lower locks, well below their ceiling rates as their values kept falling across the board, but with no buyer even at the attractively lower levels.

“After the last three days’ violence and arson throughout the country as a reaction to Benazir Bhutto’s killing, it was speculated that sanity will prevail on the share market and it will be back on the rails after initial decline but it failed to react positively,” analysts said.

“What seems to have led its way to a virtual crash soon after opening was the strong conflicting rumours of arson in some areas and murder of a an important member of MQM, they said, adding and it “proved a last straw on the camel’s back.”Prices of both blue chips and second liners fell like nine pins, but there was no buyer at the fall as nobody was willing to make fresh commitments being the last day of the year.

Rollover of December positions also proved a negative factor and took its shares in the market witnessed an unprecedented fall.

An idea of falling market could be had from the fact that the trading volume fell to 71 million shares from the previous 328 million shares as only 30 shares rose while 347 fell, with eight remaining unchanged at the last levels.

Pak PTA led the list of actives, off 70 paisas at Rs5.05 on nine million shares, followed by Fauji Fertiliser, off Rs5.25 at Rs118.75 on seven million shares, Askari Bank, loser by Rs5.25 at Rs99.75 on five million shares, OGDC, off Rs7.35 at Rs119.45 on three million shares, Dewan Salman, easy one rupee at Rs7.50 on five million shares and Zeal Pak Cement, lower by 55 paisas at Rs4.15 on four million shares.