The Pakistan Stock Exchange’s (PSX) benchmark index saw a bullish trend on Monday, gaining 353.41 points on the first days of the trading week.

According to the PSX website, the KSE-100 index closed at 80,566.21 points, a positive change of 0.44 per cent, against 80,212.79 points on the last working day.

The PSX resumed trading after a two-hour suspension due to a fire in the bourse’s Karachi headquarters. In a notice on its website, the exchange said trading was suspended at 10:25am and resumed at 12:25pm.

The situation was under control, it said, and brokerage firms’ staff had started returning to the premises.

The KSE 100, the PSX’s main index, has in recent months risen to a historic high, surpassing 80,000 points on the back of an International Monetary Fund bailout last summer that averted a default and more recently, amid continuing reforms under the lender’s umbrella.

A total of 261,649,614 shares were traded during the day as compared to 448,981,017 shares the previous day, whereas the price of shares stood at Rs 13.024 billion against Rs 18.995 billion on the last trading day.

Around 427 companies transacted their shares in the stock market, 216 of them recorded gains and 158 sustained losses, whereas the share price of 53 companies remained unchanged.

The three top trading companies were Hum Network with 20,667,563 shares at Rs11.36 per share, National BankXD with 19,555,510 shares at Rs50.92 per share and Bank of Punjab with 17,587,329 shares at Rs5.79 per share.

Sazgar Engineering Works Limited saw a maximum increase of Rs83.98 per share price, closing at Rs998,89, whereas the runner-up was Pakistan Hotels Developers Limited with a Rs57.66 rise in its per share price to Rs664.60.

Philips Morris (Pakistan) Limited saw a maximum decrease of Rs61.71 per share closing at Rs617.48, followed by Sapphire Textile Mills Limited with a Rs27.71 decline to close at Rs1,300.

(With input from Reuters)