Selling spree pulls bourses down

The country's premier bourse Dhaka Stock Exchange bounced back to the downbeat, leaving behind the positive vibe of previous session as the risk-averse investors continued their selling spree on Monday.

The market started the session on a flat note, but the risk-averse investors immediately rushed for sell offs to avoid any loss that continued till the closer.

Notable selling of shares was reported almost in all the sectors, especially in large-cap that contributed to the fall in indices.

The broad index, DSEX closed at 4678.36 points with a loss of 33.72 points or 0.71 percent.

Jute and general insurance sectors, however, enjoyed buoyancy on the day. But, total turnover, another crucial indicator of the market, dropped below Tk2.7 billion as some of the investors adopted "wait-and-see" approach.

Besides, the two selective indices, DSE30 also went down by 11.74 points while the Shariah index, DSES decreased by 8.62 points to settle at 1626.60 points and 1074.55 points respectively.

On the DSE trading floor, a total number of 98,844 trades were executed in the day's trading session with a trading volume of 94.53 million securities.

Top gainer and loser lists were mostly dominated by "Z category" and small-cap stocks.

Losers took a strong lead over the gainers as out of 354 issues traded, 78 securities gained price while 242 declined and 34 remained unchanged.

Most of the sectors witnessed correction on the day. Among the major sectors based on market capitalization -telecom (-0.6%), bank (-0.5%), fuel and power (-0.7%), pharma (- 0.5%) and textile (-1.6%) sectors witnessed price correction while jute (4.4%) and general insurance (0.1%) sectors achieved price appreciation, according to a market operator, International Leasing Securities.

The investors' activity was mostly centered on engineering (15.3%), bank (14.8%) and textile (12.4%) sectors, it added.

Brac Bank (4.8%), National Tubes (4.8%) and Northern Jute (4.0%) led the scrip-wise turnover board.

The top 10 gainers were Apollo Ishpat, Atlas Bangla, BGIC, Mozaffar Hossain Spinning, Paramount Insurance, Libra Infusion, Mercantile Insurance, Samorita Hospital, National Tea and Paramount Textile.

National Tubes topped the turnover chart followed by Brac Bank, Northern Jute, Standard Ceramics, VFS Thread, Stylecraft, Fortune Shoes, Sonarbangla Insurance, Prime Bank and Khulna Power.

The top 10 losers were Western Marine Shipyard, Tung Hai Industries, Yeakin Polymer, First Finance, United Air, Union Capital, Imam Button, Central Pharma, Aman Cotton and Olympic Accessories.

On the other hand, the port city bourse, Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) also closed in red from the winning streak of previous day.

CSCX and CASPI also went down by 45.70 points and 75.11 points to stand at 8645.20 points and 14225.45 points respectively.

At CSE, a total of 4,999,981 shares and mutual fund of 263 companies were traded, of which 73 issues advanced while 160 declined and 30 issues remained unchanged.