After a week of negativity at the bourse, the bulls returned to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Monday to take the benchmark KSE-100 Index up 945 points, or 2.37 per cent, to 40,791 points at day's close.

The market's opening at 39,847 points remained the day's low, whereas the index touched the day's high of 40,813 points by the close of the trading session.

"Stocks closed sharply higher led by scrips across the board amid investor expectations of a package for stock market investors," Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corp said.

Overall volumes, however, were lower at 125 million shares, worth Rs6 billion. Of the 359 symbols traded, 263 advanced, 82 declined and 14 remained unchanged.

"According to news reports, a delegation of PSX officials, stock brokers and representatives from the mutual fund industry had met with the prime minister over the weekend and recommended an injection of Rs20bn worth of funds into the PSX to reignite the market," reported Topline Securities.

The textile sector led the market with 28m shares traded, followed by the engineering and the communication sector with 12m and 11m shares.

Volumes were led by:

Chakwal Spinning: 11m shares traded [-15.06pc];

Aisha Steel Mill: 6.6m shares traded [+6.06pc];

TRG Pak Ltd: 5.5m shares traded [+4.98pc];

B.O.Punjab: 5.0m shares traded [+2.60pc];

K-Electric Ltd: 4.9m shares traded [+0.16pc].