The Pakistan Stock Exchange on Tuesday landed deep in the red, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index shedding 1,679 points.

Aggressive selling in the latter hours of the day dragged down the index by 3.60 per cent to touch 44,914 points by the end of the session. The benchmark tested the day's high at 46,777 points within the first 30 minutes of the session, but failed to maintain the momentum and adopted a downward trajectory. It touched the day's low at 44,823 points during trading.

Stocks fell across the board on political uncertainty as the Supreme Court directed the Panama papers Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to complete its probe, senior analyst Ahsan Mehanti said.

"Weak global crude prices, concerns for higher taxation on the corporate sector, foreign outflows and dismal economic data on exports and countrywide protest by textile industry on struck up refunds played a catalyst role in the record fall at PSX," he said while explaining the causes of negativity at bourse.

Commercial banks led the decline in the market, as sector heavyweights HBL (-4.9pc) and MCB (-5.0pc) lost value to close on their lower circuit, said a JS Global report.

"After gaining a few points on account of investor interest, oil stocks declined as well as international oil prices came to around a seven-month low," it said, adding that OGDC (-4.8pc), POL (-4.2pc) and PPL (-4.6pc) from the aforementioned sector cumulatively took 199 points from the KSE-100 index.

On the back of the textile industry observing a 'black day' today in protest against the 'anti-industry' policies of the government, NCL (-5.0pc) and NML (-5.0pc) from the textile sector shed points today, it added.

Trading activity was led by the banking sector, with 100.7 million shares changing hands during the session. The power and communication sectors followed, with volumes of 23.3m and 22.7m shares respectively.

A total of 135.2m shares of KSE-100 companies changed hands during the session, with a total worth of nearly Rs10.4 billion.

Stocks of 391 companies in all were traded on the exchange, of which 32 gained in value, whereas 340 declined and 19 remained unchanged.

Volumes were led by:

Bank of Punjab: 47.7m shares traded [-64.29pc];

K-Electric Ltd: 25.1m shares traded [+0.43pc];

Askari Bank: 13.9m shares traded [-4.82pc];

Byco Petroleum: 9.9m shares traded [+0.89pc];

Engro Polymer: 9.8m shares traded [-4.04pc];