Stocks remain sluggish in first session of week

Stocks at the Dhaka and Chattogram bourses remained sluggish on Sunday as all the indices, except the ones for Shariah-based securities, closed in the red, and investors' participation reduced by a fourth.

Bourses failed to come out of bearish mode as intense market volatility spooked the confidence of some investors, leading them to dispose of stocks in major sectors, the EBL Securities research team wrote to their clients.

DSEX, the prime index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), went down by 37.37 points or 0.68% to close at 5,448 points.

In the latter sessions of last week, the index was in an effort to recover the sharp two-day losses earlier that week.

Despite the favourable macroeconomic state of the country, low-interest rate and improved confidence in the regulator, enthusiasm on the bourses slowed down a bit as the market pulse is obscure to investors for investing, EBL analysts explained the reason for market slowdown nowadays.

As a portion of investors remained cautious during the market volatility, DSE turnover on Sunday declined by more than 24% to sum up at Tk801 crore, which went up over Tk1,000 crore on Thursday.

Of the DSE scrips, 57 advanced on Sunday, 193 declined and the price of 101 remained unchanged.

Following gainers' concentration among blue-chip index constituents on Thursday, Shariah-compliant shares demonstrated a stronger demand on Sunday.

DS-30, the blue chip index at the capital city bourse, declined by 0.5% on Sunday, while Shariah index DSES increased by 0.19%.

The same scenario was observed at the Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE). Broader indices of the port-city bourse declined by 0.6%, while the Shariah index CSI closed 0.3% higher on Sunday.

Daily trading turnover at the CSE halved to Tk41 crore.

Of the sectors, miscellaneous, pharmaceuticals, tannery, engineering and mutual funds gained some market capitalisation on Sunday.

General insurance, food, services, jute, telecommunications, bank, IT cement, and non-bank financial institutions suffered the biggest price correction respectively.