Stocks tumble as volume plunges to 14-month low
KARACHI: The stock market saw nervous investors dump shares leading that saw the KSE-100 index plunge by 403.21 points (1.05 per cent) and close at 38,128.66, which wiped out Rs80bn from the shareholders’ wealth.
The index tumbled in line with the collapse across the world markets as investors freaked out of equities on inverted US treasury yield curve, which in the past nine times had correctly predicted the recession in US. Economists believed that it could signal global economic slowdown in the next 6-18 months.
Sell-off in equity markets was witnessed across Asia, including India’s Sensex, Japan’s Nikkei and China’s Shanghai Composite. Additional pressure was brought to bear on the index as some market strategists anticipated as large as 25-50 basis points hike in the State Bank monetary policy due end of the week.