DSE turnover drops to one-month low

Although the country’s stock market managed to maintain marginal gains in the previous two working days, it suffered a major fall on Sunday.

The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), the main stock market, witnessed the lowest turnover in one month on the day. 

The DSE had a turnover of Tk 594.37 crore, the lowest in a month or 21 working days. Earlier on May 26 this year, the turnover was Tk 539.12 crore.

On Sunday, there was no sector that did not go through the fall. The last two weeks have seen a jump in shares of weak or low-capitalised companies.

None of the top 10 companies with the highest price increases is of good fundamentals. Of these, six are loss-making companies — most of which have failed to pay dividends for a decade. The same picture is seen in the case of the top 20 companies that have increased the most.

Capital market analyst Professor Dr Mohammad Helal believes this suspicious market movement is no coincidence.

“There are questions as to why the prices of these shares are rising. Surely it is not growing for any natural reason. Everyone knows why it is growing, yet people buy those shares. That should not be the case,” he said.

Meanwhile, all the indices and the share prices of most of the companies also declined on the day.

DSEX, the benchmark index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange, went down over 26 points or 0.41 percent to settle the day at 6,301.

Among other indices, the shariah-based DSES fell by 4.06 points or 0.29 percent, and the blue-chip DS-30 decreased by 11.99 points or 0.52 percent.

Shares of the 381 companies were traded on the day, of which only 94 firms gained, 230 lost and 57 remained unchanged.

The textile sector rose to the top position in terms of transactions. The total turnover in this sector was Tk 96.6 crore, which is 17.79 percent of the total turnover.

The engineering sector was at the second position with Tk 68.4 crore turnover, followed by food and allied sector at Tk 67.8 crore.

Shares of Fu-wang Food were the most-traded by value on the DSE as its shares worth Tk 34.23 crore were traded on the day.

Anwar Galvanising, which was the second most-traded stock, had a turnover of Tk 28.67 crore followed by Shinepukur Ceramics, Beximco Limited, Salvo Chemical, JHRML, IPDC Finance, Monno Fabrics, Metro Spinning and Prime Textile.

Meanwhile, the overall index CASPI of the Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) decreased over 45 points to 18,573 and securities worth Tk 21.64 crore were traded on the day.