Stock market paused on profit booking in the past week, breaking the fourth consecutive week of bull-run.
Mainly profit booking on heavyweight telecommunication stocks ended the market flat, as rally in power and pharmaceuticals offset losses in the past week.
The benchmark DSEX closed at 4,547, slightly slipping 7 points or 0.2%. The comprising blue chips DS30 index rose 20 points or 1% to 1,726. The DSE Shariah Index edged 1 points or 0.2% higher to 1,061.
Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) Selective Categories Index (CSCX) gained 37 points or 0.5% to close at 8,559.
The week’s daily average turnover at the DSE stood at Tk658 crore, down over 2% over the previous week’s average of Tk672 crore, as the bourse has to shortened trading session to four instead of usual five on occasion of public holiday on Sunday.
Fuel and power, pharmaceuticals, engineering and textile sectors has caught investor attention in the past week, making up 15%, 14%, 12% and 11% respectively of the week’s total turnover.
“Changing the ripple of last week, investors pursued somewhat cautious stance,” said IDLC Investments in its weekly market analysis.
It said natural correction and profit booking were observed after last few sessions’ gain following Eid festival, resulting in frequent rebalancing by investors.
Lanka Bangla Securities said after four consecutive weeks of bull-run, market took a breather during the past week.
Average daily turnover was Tk658 crore, indicating that the market hold on to its strength during this consolidation period, it said.
Zenith Investments said the sheer size of the volume proves that traders are only taking a pause following the recent upward move.
Losers took a strong lead over the gainers as out of 305 issues traded in the past week, 241 declined, 52 advanced and 12 remained unchanged.
The week was mainly dominated by cement sector which rallied over 6% in with 22% increase in its turnover.
Mutual fund sector was the worst performer last week which lost 14% mainly due to the post record date price fluctuations for corporate declaration. Among the top ten losers in the past week, seven came from the mutual fund sector.
Fuel and power sector gained 1.7%. Pharmaceuticals ended flat, while telecommunication plunged by 4%.
Banks and non-banking financial institutions lost over 2% and 1.3% respectively. Food and allied sector edged down.
