The Pakistan Stock Exchange landed in red on Tuesday as the capital market failed to recover from Tuesday's negativity, with the benchmark KSE-100 shares index shed 328 points or 0.74 per cent to reach 43,792 points.

The benchmark tested day's high at 44,206 points just 85 points above the session's opening in first 10 minutes just to dive down immediately. It touched the bottom at 43,027 points level on the back of political uncertainty.

Volumes were led by the commercial banking sector with almost 30 million shares traded. The power and cement sectors followed the pursuit with 24.3mn and 22.6mn shares traded respectively.

Senior analyst Ahsan Mehnati said, "Stocks closed lower amid pressure in scrips across the board as investors weight outcome of the panamagate case after the joint interrogation team (JIT), that probed business affairs of the first family, submitted its report to the apex court."

He said that the late session support in oil, banking, and textile stocks supported the index to close above session low after global oil prices retreat, reports of surging banking deposits, upbeat data on textile exports and auto sales data.

"Concerns over surging trade deficit and external account imbalance played a catalyst role in bearish close at the PSX," he added.

126.79 million shares changed hands by the end of the session, with a total worth of nearly Rs10.5 billion.

Stocks of 346 companies were traded, of which 141gained in value, 192 declined and 13 remained unchanged.

Volumes were led by:

K-Electric Ltd: 19.92m shares traded [+4.97pc].

TRG Pak Ltd: 14.77m shares traded [+0.81pc];

Engro Polymer: 8.49m shares traded [-2.69pc];

Sui North Gas: 8.32m shares traded [-4.72pc]; and,

B.O.Punjab: 7.30m shares traded [+1.98pc].