KARACHI: Selling pressure persisted throughout trading session at Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) with benchmark KSE-100 Index falling below 79,000-point level after nearly 2 percent loss that was triggered by rising political uncertainty in country.

At close, KSE-100 settled at 78,539.19, loss of 1,578.70 points or 1.97 percent, amid lower volume.  Negative sentiment carried over weekend and pushed index lower with across-the-board selling including in sectors such as automobile assemblers, cement, chemical, commercial banks, oil and gas exploration companies as well as OMCs. Index-heavy stocks including OGDC, PPL, PSO, SHEL, SSGC, HBL, MCB and NBP traded in negative.

Volume on all-share index decreased to 375.6 million from 479 million session ago. Value of shares declined to Rs 19.35 billion from Rs 27.85 billion in previous session.K-Electric Limited was volume leader with 33.44 million shares, followed by Pak Elektron with 23.56 million shares and PIA Holding Company with 19.21 million shares. Shares of 446 companies were traded on Monday, of which 80 registered an increase, 319 recorded fall while 47 remained unchanged. Globally, Asian shares tread cautiously on Monday ahead of packed week of corporate earnings that should test sky-high valuations of tech stocks, while investors hope key reading in US inflation will narrow odds on September rate cut. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.2 percent, having shed 3 percent last week amid general risk-off mood. Japan's Nikkei lost 0.6 percent and South Korea's benchmark index was down 0.4 percent.