Stocks edged higher in choppy trading yesterday as late profit-taking wiped off early gains.
Investors booked profit mainly on financial institutions, power and pharmaceuticals stocks and took fresh position on the banking stocks, supporting the market to close in the positive terrain.
After sharp rise over the last two consecutive sessions, the benchmark DSE General Index, DGEN, closed at about 4097 with a slight gain of about 17 points or 0.41%.
The new benchmark, DSEX, rose nearly 29 points or 0.74% to 3902. The DSE30 ended about 10 points or 0.67% higher to 1420.
The Chittagong Stock Exchange Selective Category Index, CSCX, was up 42 points to about 7696.
The market bellwether banks, which recently remained under pressure amid poor first quarter earnings, rallied 3.62%, driven by One Bank and IFIC Bank that gained more than 8% each.
Banks registered the highest amount in turnover with market capitalisation going up by 3.52%. The textile stocks came in second highest turnover. However, the market capitalisation of textile sector declined by 1.83%.
Most of other sectors ended in red on price correction with power shedding 1.89%, non-banking financial institutions 1.88%, pharmaceuticals 0.36%.
Trading activities declined as DSE turnover stood at Tk4.7bn, down 13% from the previous session.
Drop in turnover signaled that investors were taking a bit of time-out to observe the market scenario as they seemed to be in thought of taking some portfolio reshuffling decisions based on the ongoing index movements, said Lanka Bangla Securities in its daily market analysis.
The market breadth remained negative as out of total 273 issues traded, 89 gained, 170 lost and 14 remained unchanged.
IDLC Investment said apparent ease in political atmosphere and snowballing budgetary expectations, supported by fading impact of Q1 declarations, continued to dominate investors’ sentiments.
The effect was observed throughout the session, as DSEX climbed up 29 points amid sporadic volatility, it said.
Significant gains over the several sessions prompted investors to book some profits, creating some selling pressure in the market, it also said.
Orion Pharma continued to see highest volume of trade, followed by United Airways, Summit Purbanchol Power Company Ltd, Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd, RN Spinning, National Bank Ltd and Meghna Petroleum.