The prevailing negative trend at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) continued for the third consecutive day on Wednesday, with the benchmark KSE-100 index losing 107 points, or 0.26 per cent, to close at 40,504.

The index saw some positive activity in the first few minutes of the trading, but failed to sustain the momentum as the benchmark index oscillated during the day. The index hit the day's high at 40,777 points whereas it touched the day's low at 40,315 points near the close of the session.

Volumes dropped, with only 129 million shares worth Rs5.4 billion traded in the session. Of the 356 symbols traded, 138 advanced, 200 declined while 18 remained unchanged.

Senior analyst Ahsan Mehanti said the market witnessed pressure in scrips across the board as investors weighed warnings on macroeconomic risks and a balance of payment crisis facing the country amidst the release of The South Asia Economic Focus, Fall 2017.

"Weak global crude prices, volatile rupee-dollar parity, dismal fertiliser offtake data for September 2017, uncertainty over the outcome of the EU GSP+ review, and ongoing political noise played a catalyst role in the bearish close," he added.

A JS Global report, on the other hand, said: "Profit booking was seen in the market where investors started reducing intraday positions."

Market volumes also remained low at 129mn shares, 30pc down from the last trading day, it added. "Mixed sentiments were witnessed in the cement sector where KOHC [+2.76pc], LUKC [+0.02pc], DGKC [+0.31pc] closed positive and on the flipside FCCL [-0.43pc], MLCF [-0.88pc] and PIOC [-0.74pc] closed in the red zone," the report reads.

The energy and petroleum sector gained to close higher than its previous day's close as crude oil prices edged higher for the third consecutive day in the global economy. POL [+1.24pc]) and OGDC [+0.55pc]) were the major gainers of the mentioned sector, the report said.

The power generation sector led the market with 14mn shares, followed by the communication and the textile spinning sector with 13.2 and 12.4 million shares.

Volumes were led by:

K-Electric Ltd: 11.6m shares traded [-1.88pc]

TRG Pak Ltd: 8m shares traded [-0.55pc]

Fauji Foods(R): 7.6m shares traded [-4.60pc]

Azgard Nine: 6.6m shares traded [+3.10pc]

Dost Steels Ltd: 6.0m shares traded [+1.60pc]