Karachi: Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) eventually saw benchmark KSE-100 Index close marginally negative, but not before it had lost over 2,000 points in early minutes of trading.

KSE-100 started the trading session with its biggest fall in months, plunging below 72,000 level as investors offloaded shares over rumours of high taxes being imposed on capital markets in upcoming budget.However, participants soon began to cherry-pick over greater likelihood of rate cut in monetary policy announcement on June 10. Gradually, market recovered with index clawing back over 73,000, and only closed marginally in red.At close, benchmark index settled at 73,754.02, down by just 108.91 points or 0.15 percent. It had earlier hit an intra-day low of 71,781.96.MEBL, PPL, HBL, MCB, OGDC and UBL lost value to weigh down on index by-302 points, according to Topline. Volume on all-share index increased to 559.55 million from 352.74 million session ago. Value of shares jumped to Rs 20.21 billion from Rs 12.31 billion in previous session.

Pervez Ahmed Co was volume leader with 78.93 million shares, followed by Fauji Cement with 34.4 million shares and WorldCall Telecom with 28.27 million shares.Shares of 441 companies were traded on Friday, of which 180 registered an increase, 200 recorded fall while 61 remained unchanged. “A global reversal of policy rate has been initiated, with ECB and Bank of Canada announcing rate cut. This will support State Bank of Pakistan’s decision.”