KARACHI: The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) persisted with its bull run as the index rolled up to yet another historical close. The index has already gained over 1,000 points during the week after it opened Monday on 43,270.90. Foreigners carried forward their trend of selling but local investors highly optimistic about the future carry on buying. World shares climbed to a near three-month high on Thursday as encouraging China data and a record high Wall Street kept traders upbeat ahead of an expected extension of the European central banks already generous stimulus programme. The KSE 100 index hit the historical highest high of 44,836.10 after 341.11 points appreciation and settled the day at 44,741.98, up by 246.99 points. The KMI 30 index swayed between a positive 616.72 points and negative 481.37 points to conclude the session at 75,945.95 after 432.43 points increase. KSE All Share Index rose 138.86 points to reach 30,734.40. The advancer to decliner ratio stood at 129 to 235. The market volume dropped down to 368.24 million from previous session’s 470.91 million. The Bank of Punjab (BOP -2.88%) and NIB Bank Limited (NIB -18.18%) dominated the volume charts with 52.79 million and 48.10 million shares traded. The commercial bank was a clear volume leader with cumulative volume of 122.13 million. NIB Bank Limited (NIB) crashed down by 18.18% after details of its amalgamation with and into MCB Bank Limited (MCB -0.10%) surfaced. The boards of directors of both banks in their separate meetings on Wednesday approved the amalgamation scheme through a share swap arrangement. The ratio was decided as 1 MCB share for every 140.043 shares of NIB. Biggest news of the day came from Lucky Cement Limited (LUCK +5.00%). Board of the company decided to be invest Rs 12 billion by way of equity in the proposed associated project company to undertake the manufacturing, assembling, marketing, distribution, sale, after-sale service, import and export of all types of Kia Motor Vehicles, parts and accessories. It also announced that the company is also considering to initiate due diligence exercise to evaluate potential acquisition of North Plant of Dewan Cement Limited (DCL +4.99%) located in Hattar, District Haripur. In view of the company’s expansion plan in Iraq, the company decided to increase its existing cement grinding capacity from 0.871 million tons to 1.742 million tonnes.