The 100-index of the Pakistan Stock Exchange continued with a bullish trend on Friday, gaining 186.51 points, or 0.32%, closing at 59,086.35 points.

A total of 658.42 million shares valuing Rs 22.015 billion were traded during the day as compared to 669.25 million shares valuing Rs25.232 billion the last day.

As much as 387 companies transacted their shares in the stock market; 165 of them recorded gains and 203 sustained losses, whereas 19 remained unchanged.

The market has shown a bullish trend in November as a delegation of the International Monetary Fund arrived in Pakistan for talks on the first review of the stand-by agreement signed in July.

Confidence in the market has grown as the IMF team departed from Pakistan with an agreement. After the Fund’s board approves the agreement, Pakistan will receive the second tranche of $710 million.

The market recovered to the 53,000-point mark in early November after a gap of six years, till then its highest level in history.

Since then, every thousand points have been a new record for the 100-Index.

In addition to the IMF deal, analysts have attributed the performance of the market to fiscal discipline by the government as well as a clampdown on the smuggling and manipulation of the dollar.

The rupee has also been slowly making gains against the US dollar and has come down from the above Rs300 levels it had soared past earlier.

The gap between the open market and interbank rate, while still existing, has narrowed significantly.