The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Monday landed deep in the red, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index losing 925 points.

The index plunged 2.15 per cent over the course of the day to close at 42,153 points, touching a day's high at 43,135 points in the first few minutes after market opening, then sliding to the day's low of 42,017 points near the close of the trading session.

The banking sector led activity at the bourse, with 26.9 million shares traded, followed by the cement and the textile sectors with 18.3m and 18.2m shares, respectively.

"Stocks closed lower amid concerns for political uncertainty and weak financial results," said Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation.

"Foreign inflows and surge in global crude prices amid falling United States inventories supported the index to close above the day's low," he said adding that the concerns over economic uncertainty, falling foreign exchange reserves and dismal trade deficit data for July 2017 had played a catalyst role in the bearish close.

A total of 78.9m shares of KSE-100 companies changed hands during the session, worth nearly Rs6.3 billion.

Stocks of 364 companies in all were traded on the exchange, of which only 44 gained in value, whereas 310 declined and 10 remained unchanged.

Volumes were led by:

Azgard Nine: 9.8m shares traded [-1.35pc];

B.O.Punjab: 12.4m shares traded [-5.72pc];

TRG Pak Ltd: 9.3m shares traded [-4.92pc];

K-Electric Ltd: 12.2m shares traded [-4.42pc];

Aisha Steel Mill: 8.4m shares traded [-4.99pc];