Stocks extend losses amid dull trading

Both the bourses of the country slipped further yesterday following the selling tendency of pessimistic investors.

Maintaining the downbeat trend of previous day, premier bourse Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) opened the morning session yesterday with a loss of the broad index. It rebounded a bit later, but could not sustain the momentum till the end of the last trading hour.

The broad index, DSEX closed at 4951.73 points with a decline of 6.98 points or 0.14 per cent from the previous day.

“Market witnessed a muted session as risk averse investors followed ‘wait and see’ approach which kept participation low,” said a market operator, EBL Securities.

Besides, the market turnover decreased by 21 per cent from last day’s session and stood at Tk 3.18 billion.

In addition, the two selective indices, DSE30 decreased by 7.39 points while DSES increased slightly by 0.40 points to stand at 1766.71 points and 1145.70 points respectively.

On the DSE trading floor, a total number of 101,593 trades were executed in yesterday’s trading session with a trading volume of 105.98 million securities.

Gainers took a strong lead over the losers as out of 353 issues traded, 147 securities gained price while 141 declined and 65 remained unchanged.

Investors exerted selling pressure on telecommunication, bank and food and allied sectors.

Sector wise performance exposed that general insurance (1.6 per cent), jute (1.1 per cent) and tannery (1.0 per cent) experienced highest price appreciation while paper (-1.3 per cent), life insurance (-1.1 per cent) and telecom (-0.8 per cent) sector experienced highest price correction in today’s session.

Investors’ focus was mostly concentrated on general insurance (24.2 per cent), engineering (14.5 per cent) and pharma (9.9 per cent) sectors, according to the EBL Securities.

The top 10 gainers were SEML LEC Management Fund, People Leasing, National Tubes, Republic Insurance, Renwick Jajneswar, CAPM BDBL Mutual Fund 1, Eastern Insurance, Pragati Insurance, Fortune and Paramount Insurance.

Monno Stafflers topped the turnover chart followed by Sonarbangla Insurance, National Tubes, GP, VFS Thread, Eastern Insurance, Beacon Pharma, Rupali Insurance, Fortune and Monno Ceramic.

Besides, the port city bourse, Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) maintained the downbeat of previous day.

CSCX and CASPI decreased by 36.17 and 61.69 points respectively.

At CSE, a total of 6,628,845 shares and mutual fund of 237 companies were traded, of which 84 issues advanced while 120 declined and 33 issues remained unchanged.