The bears returned in full force at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Tuesday, pulling the benchmark KSE-100 Index down 903 points to 41,116 by day's end.

The index remained under pressure throughout the session, hitting a day's high of 42,043 within the first few minutes of the session and subsequently sliding to a low of 41,025 towards the day's close amidst sustained selling.

In all, almost 121 million shares worth Rs6.8 billion were traded. Of the total, KSE 100 stocks accounted for 63m shares.

The cement sector led activity with 21.4m shares traded, followed by the communication and banking sectors with 14.7m and 13.3m shares traded, respectively.

"Stocks fell sharply lower on political noise over National Accountability Bureau references amidst the threat of resignation by the interior minister and concerns over the outcome of the IHC dismissing the [finance minister's] petitions challenging corruption proceedings," said Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation.

He added that a dismal economic outlook, uncertainty over the outcome of the EU GSP Plus review this month, dismal data on cement and fertilizer sales for September 2017, falling global crude prices on higher OPEC output, and political uncertainty played a catalyst's role in the bearish close at the PSX.

A total of 365 scrips were traded in the session, of which only 56 advanced, 296 declined and 13 remained unchanged.

Volumes were led by:

Maple Leaf: 9.5m shares traded [-4.94pc];

TRG Pak Ltd: 6.83m shares traded [-4.70pc];

K-Electric Ltd: 6.80m shares traded [-0.87pc];

WorldCall Telecom: 6.6m shares traded [+2.04pc];

B.O.Punjab: 4.6m shares traded [-3.13pc].