Seven stocks come out of the floor
Turnover on the Dhaka Stock Exchange shrinks by 24% to Tk345 crore as bearish trading continues.
Amid the continuation of the selloff, puzzled investors further refrained from buying and selling on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) on Monday.
Turnover in the premier bourse dropped to Tk345 crore, which was down by 24% and the lowest in the last 14 sessions, while the broad-based index DSEX fell by 0.05% to 6204.17 points.
Stockbrokers and analysts said macroeconomic uncertainties and the Ramadan effect together kept investors very cautious for weeks, while the global banking problems and how the local market restrictions like the lending rate cap and floor price would go away emerged as a new headache for stock investors nowadays.
Higher interest rate might hurt fund flow into stocks, while removal of floor prices could erode capital in the market, feared investors.
On the other hand, in Ramadan, people and businesses tend to withdraw some cash from stock, and that usually results in sluggish market behaviour, according to market people.
Also, the regulator shortened the trading hours for Ramadan by one hour, as the market would open at the regular time of 10am, but close an hour earlier at 1.20pm.
However, the market following the sharp selloff on Sunday started to inch up in the morning, but that did not sustain amid a fresh round of selloffs in a number of stocks.
DSEX, for the first time in March, hit below 6,200 at 10.50am and bargain hunters pulled it up to 6,213 by 1pm.
Adamant sellers, desperate for some cash in hand, again dragged the index a little down during the closing bell.
The selloff was more concentrated in some selective scrips that were active in trading, and stockbrokers hint most of the sell orders were from large accounts this week as financial industry entities were heading for their quarterly closing, and high-net-worth individuals' confidence in the market was shaky.
Both the blue-chip index DS30 and the Shariah index DSES underperformed the broad-based index on Monday.
On the DSE, 51 scrips advanced, 35 declined, and 97 had bidders during the closing bell, up from 90 in the previous session.
The seven scrips that came out of floor price on Monday were Green Delta Insurance, IBN Sina Pharmaceuticals, Mercantile Bank, Padma Life, Renwick Jajneswar, Rupali Insurance, and Sonar Bangla Insurance, according to a Royal Capital report.
On the other hand, no stock nosedived to the floor on Monday.
Of the sectors, life insurance, service and real estate, jute, ceramics, IT, fuel and power, and banking inched up, while travel and leisure, tannery, textiles, pharmaceuticals, paper and printing, engineering, and miscellaneous ended in losing territory.