The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Tuesday managed to close flattish despite sustained selling in the early hours of trading.

A sustained bout of selling had been followed by cherry-picking, which helped the benchmark KSE-100 Index gain 43 points to close at 38,525.

The benchmark had showed a steep decline during the first half of the session. The benchmark hit a day's low at 37,737 points before adopting a positive momentum for the rest of the session. It hit a day's high of 38,620 points near the close of trading.

In all, over 195 million shares worth almost Rs8.7 billion changed hands during the session. A total of 347 companies' shares were traded, out of which 100 advanced, 229 declined, whereas 18 remained unchanged.

The banking sector dominated trading with 37m shares traded, while the communication and power generation and distribution sectors followed with 24.8m and 15.6m shares traded respectively.

Volumes were led by:

TRG Pak Ltd: 18.6m shares traded [-1.31pc];

Crescent Star(R): 8.3m shares traded [+3900.00pc];

Bank Al-Falah: 13.3m shares traded [-0.75pc];

K-Electric Ltd.: 11.6m shares traded [+4.15pc];

Pak Elektron: 10.6m shares traded [-1.49pc].