Equities at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) failed to sustain gains made during the day, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index closing in the red. Earlier on Thursday it had risen 0.4%.

The equities traded in a range of 397 points, pushing the benchmark index above the 44,000 level to record an intraday high of 44,194.26 (up by 218 points) and low at 43,796.65 (down by 179.04 points).

At close, it ended with a drop of 168.46 points, or 0.38%, to settle at 43,807.23.

"The decline in global commodity prices and rally in global equity markets helped in improving the investors’ confidence,” said Capital Stake in a note. “However, the depreciation of rupee against the US Dollar acted as a negative trigger,” it added.

The Pakistani Rupee recorded it's all-time low at 180.07 against the US dollar. On an FYTD basis, it depreciated by 14.30% or Rs22.53.

The depreciation come as oil prices surged by 4% on Thursday, Benchmark Brent crude futures gained $4, or 4.1%, to $102.02 a barrel, and US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was up $3.82, or 4%, to $98.86 a barrel.

Meanwhile, sectors dragging the benchmark index downwards included oil and gas exploration (50.60 points), power generation and distribution (24.01 points) and the cement sector (23.38 points).

Equities extend gains, KSE-100 up 0.6%

Volume on the all-share index decreased significantly to 148.51 million, from 236.51 million on Wednesday. The value of shares traded also declined to Rs2.99 billion from Rs5.79 billion recorded in the previous session.

Flying Cement (R) was the volume leader with 36.23 million shares, followed by WorldCall Telecom with 14.57 million shares, and TPL Properties with 7.62 million shares.

Shares of 335 companies were traded on Thursday, of which 110 registered an increase, 202 recorded a fall, and 23 remained unchanged.

During the day, the website of PSX became unresponsive during the opening hours of the trading session due to "technical hosting issues", which were resolved later in the day.