KARACHI: Stocks continued to slide for the second day on Friday with the KSE-100 index losing 374 points (0.78 per cent) to close at 47,577.06. It settled marginally higher over the intraday low of 407 points.

Fears about the Panamagate case verdict and concerns over Pakistan-India relations and the US strike in Afghanistan spool(ed both individual and institutional investors who trimmed their positions in the weekend session.

Raza Jafri, director of research at Intermarket Securities, af firmed that the trading was directionless as things were murky mainly on the geopolitical front.

The trading volume dipped to 126 million shares from the 233m shares overthe previous day, substantially down from the 10-dayaverage of 178m shares.

SSGC was the volumeleader with 11.7m shares; the stock extended its previ-ous day gain to close up 2.75pc. The second-tierstocks led the list of volume leaders.

Ahsan Mehanti at Arif Habib Corp said that the stocks closed bearish amid concerns after global equities retreated on geopolitical uncer t aint y.

Auto, cement and pharmaceutical stocks outperformed the market on surging sales data for March.

Analysts at JS Global said that the banking sector led the decline as the sector lost value by 0.7pc with UBL down 1.47pc and MCB 0.51pc. Major contribution to the index decline came from OGDC which fell 2.42pc, HUBC 1.37pc and F FC 1.79pc.

Ghandara Nissan (GH NL) notified the bourse regarding cooperation agreement with JAC Motors, Chinese state-owned automobile and commercial vehicle manufacturer for assembly of Model X200 LCV`s.