Stocks post marginal gain

Country’s both the bourses, Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) and Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) returned to upbeat on Wednesday overcoming the profit booking sell pressure of risk-averse investors.

DSE rebounded to green and posted marginal gain after two days of profit booking sell pressure amid choppy trading.

The market started with a positive tune as opportunist investors showed their buying spree, but the final hour selling frenzy wiped out the early gain.

The buoyancy in mutual fund, textile, financial institutions and food sectors helped the benchmark index to close in green.

The broad index, DSEX settled at 4934.46 points on Wednesday with a gain of 5.59 points or 0.11 per cent.

Besides, two selective indices, Blue Chip index, DSE30 went down slightly by 0.82 points while Shariah index, DSES increased by 1.98 points to settle at 1677.66 points and 1111.93 points respectively.

On the DSE trading floor, a total number of 184,824 trades were executed in today’s trading session with a trading volume of 431.01 million securities.

DSE’s turnover, a crucial indicator of the market, plunged by 17 per cent over the last session as some of the investors preferred to observe the market movement. The turnover stood at  8.88 billion taka from 10.67 billion taka in the previous session.

Gainers took lead over losers as out of 355 issues traded, 204 securities gained price while 106 declined and 45 remained unchanged.

The market-cap of DSE decreased to 4,026 billion taka which was 4,038 billion taka in the previous session.

The cautious investors, however, reshuffled their portfolios in engineering, cement, life insurance and bank sector stocks.

The general insurance sector continued dominating the turnover board with 27 per cent of total turnover. Walton Hi-Tech took a breath after ten consecutive sessions of bull-run after listing, according to a market analyst, International Leasing Securities Limited (ILSL).

It said the major sector witnessed better performance today. Among the major sectors based on market capitalization – mutual fund (7.3%), textile (2.9%), and financial institution (1.2%) sectors achieved price appreciation while engineering (-3.7%), cement (-1.5%) and bank (- 0.5%) sectors witnessed price correction.

The investors’ activity was mostly centred on general insurance (27.1%), textile (17.6%) and mutual fund (12.3%) sectors while Beximco (2.5%), Express Insurance (2.4%) and BD Finance (2.4%) led the scrip wise turnover board, added ILSL.

Beximco Limited topped the turnover chart followed by Express Insurance, BD Finance, Walton Hi-Tech, Paramount Textile, Continental Insurance, Kattali Textile, Northern Insurance, Asian Insurance and Square Pharma.

The top 10 gainers were Continental Insurance, Stylecraft, ICBEP First Mutual Fund 1, Desh Garment, Anwar Galvanizing, Queen South, Green Delta Mutual Fund, PHP Mutual Fund 1 and Express Insurance.

The top ten losers were Walton Hi-Tech, FAS Finance, ILFSL, Nitol Insurance, Union Capital, Padma Life, Premier Insurance, United Insurance, Sunlife Insurance and Bay Leasing.

On the other hand, port city bourse, Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) also returned to green after the bearish trend of two previous sessions.

Selective categories index, CSCX and all shares price index, CASPI rose by 12.42 points and 27.91 points to stand at 8474.96 points and 14113.04 points respectively.

At CSE, a total of 13,964,706 share and mutual funds of 283 companies were traded, of which 170 issues advanced while 75 declined and 38 issues remained unchanged.