DSE turnover tanks 35%, lowest in 20 months

Dhaka stocks started a new week with a dismal session on Sunday as the daily turnover dropped by 35 percent, hitting a 20-month low.

All indices on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) fell on Sunday. But, the share and unit prices of most of the companies remained unchanged on this day.

However, the biggest shock came in the form of turnover. On the DSE, the volume of turnover on the day was the lowest in a year and 8 months.

Some Tk 313.56 crore was traded on DSE on the day, the lowest in 420 working days or one year 7 months 29 days. Earlier DSE had less turnover on April 5, 2021, with Tk 236 crore traded on DSE that session.

Before Sunday, the lowest turnover this year was last July 19. On that day, Tk 319.35 crore was traded. However, trading was halted for several hours due to a technical glitch that day.

According to market analysts, since last June, concern about the capital market has been on the rise. In July, the regulator BSEC set a floor price for all stocks when the DSE general index fell below 6,000 points.

As a result, the capital market returned to growth from July 31. The rise continued till the second week of October.

However, when concerns about the economy spread, the capital market gradually lost momentum.

At the end of the day, DSE’s key index DSEX decreased by 20 points or 0.33 percent to settle the day at 6,224.

Among other indices, the shariah-based DSES fell by 7 points or 0.48 percent and the blue-chip DS-30 was down by 9 points or 0.41 percent.

On this day, shares of the 300 companies traded on the day, of which 22 firms gained, 64 issues lost and 214 companies remained unchanged.

The IT sector rose to the top position in terms of transactions. The total turnover in this sector was Tk 60.93 crore, which is 21.97 percent of the total turnover.

The Insurance sector was at the second position with Tk 27.41 crore turnover, followed by Food and Allied sector at Tk 26.84 crore.

Shares of Aamra Network were the most-traded by value on the DSE as its shares worth Tk 18.08 crore were traded on the day.

Bashundhara Paper Mills, which was the second most-traded stock, had a turnover of Tk 14.68 crore followed by Genex Infosys, Chartered Life Insurance, Sea Pearl Beach Resort, Advent Pharma, E-Generation, Navana Pharmaceuticals, Eastern Housing and Olympic Industries.

Meanwhile, the overall index CASPI of the Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) decreased 25 points to 18,394 and securities worth Tk 6.08 crore were traded on the day.