Stocks tumble 928 points on political tensions

Pakistani shares snapped a two-day recovery spree on Thursday as investors resorted to profit-taking in a volatile session, dragging the benchmark index below 79,000 despite a bullish start on better corporate results. Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said the stock market witnessed an across-the-board downturn due to political uncertainty. He said investor concerns about a settlement of $15 billion due to Chinese IPPs, a surging power tariff impacting industrial earnings, political noise over banning opposition, and a weak rupee led to a bearish close. Topline Securities Ltd said the selling spree towards the last hours of the session wiped out early gains. During the session, blue-chip stocks like Bank Al-Habib, Hub Power, Systems Ltd, MCB Bank and Meezan Bank negatively contributed 396 points to the index. Conversely, PSO, Pakistan Oilfield and Attock Petroleum saw some buying interest as they added 40 points.