A bullish trend sustained at the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Thursday, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index gaining 271 points to close at 43,510.

The index showed some negative activity in the first few minutes to hit a day's low of 43,176 points. It reached a day's high of 43,634 points during intra-day trading.

Volumes showed significant improvement, as 211.94 million shares worth Rs10 billion changed hands compared to 151.36m shares worth Rs7.1b traded on the previous trading day. Of the 367 traded scrips, 219 advanced, 124 declined and 24 remained unchanged.

The PSX landed in the green thanks mainly to "sharp gains in the Cement sector on reportedly strong institutional flows", an Elixir Securities report read.

"Today's major contribution to the index came from LUCK (+5pc), ENGRO (+2.46pc), DGKC (+4.04pc) and MLCF (+5pc) contributing more than 170points to the index," elaborated another report issued by JS Global read.

Overall, the cement sector dominated trading with 39.16m shares traded, while the chemical and engineering sectors followed with 37.75m and 15.43m shares changing hands.

Volumes were led by:

• Lotte Chemical: 11.4m shares traded [+1.02pc];

• D.G.K.Cement: 10.8m shares traded [+4.04pc];

• Aisha Steel Mill: 9.7m shares traded [+3.51pc];

• Fauji Cement: 9.7m shares traded [4.97pc];

• Azgard Nine: 8.7m shares traded [+0.68pc].