Low volume of trade and eroding investor confidence turned stock markets towards bearish spell in the past week that ended Thursday.
Downgrade in global economic outlook and extreme volatility impacted the market sentiments. Trading activities continued to slide despite rate cut by the central bank in previous week.
During the week, the benchmark of Dhaka Stock Exchange, DSEX, breached the ‘psychological’ threshold of 4,600-mark to settled at 4,654, shedding over 83 points or 2%. In two weeks, it lost 120 points.
The blue-chip comprising index DS30 fell 22 points or 1.3% to 1,729. The DSE Shariah Index, DSES, was down 14 points or 1.4% to 1,102.
The Chittagong Stock Exchange Selective Category Index, CSCX, closed at 8,566, falling 88 points or 1%.
Trading activity was again depressing as compared to the previous week.
The DSE daily turnover was Tk430 crore, sharply down almost 27% over the previous week’s average of Tk588 crore.
Textile, engineering and power were the most-traded sectors, together accounting for 45% of the week’s total turnover.
The investors preferred micro cap stocks over the cap classes, reallocating their capital to the smallest of cap classes as micro caps gained 0.8%, while mini and large caps fell 1.7% and 0.9% respectively.
Losers outpaced gainers as out of 328 issues traded, 195 closed lower, 106 higher and 27 issues remained unchanged on DSE during the week.
The DSE market capitalisation was down 0.73% to Tk3,17036 crore during the week. Food and allied, ceramic, IT sectors increased in terms of market capitalisation during the past week whereas major sectors such as bank, power, pharmaceuticals and chemicals lost market capitalisation.
Almost all the sectors suffered most, except IT Sector that gained 4.5%, driven by newly listed company ITC, and food and allied 4%. Heavyweight bank declined 0.7%, power 2.8%, pharmaceuticals 2.2% and engineering 2%.