Stocks start the month with positive vibes

Dhaka stocks, amid some psychological boosts after a stretched dullness over the last month, have entered the new month of April with positive vibes.

DSEX, the broad-based index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), advanced for the third straight session on Sunday, gaining 0.18% to 6,217.

Stockbrokers thanked several policy and regulatory developments that came together last week – corporate bonds and debentures set to be off exposure limits for commercial banks' capital market investments; Tk300 crore loans to brokers and merchant banks from the Capital Market Stabilisation Fund, and the regulatory push for more stock market investment by mutual funds.

Month-end sell pressure from many institutional investors was over earlier last week, and now many of them have started to make fresh bets on a wide range of stocks that might generate a better return, said a senior brokerage official.

Also, retail investors, seeing an increasing number of small-cap scrips taking off the floor and continuing rallies, have started to become more active, mostly in the trendy small and mid-cap stocks, he added.

Additionally, an increasing expectation for a better macroeconomic environment in the coming days helped stocks move a little higher, according to analysts.

"Buy dominance prevailed across the bourse as optimistic investors opted to take positions in the rallying scrips with quick gain potential, causing the market to remain upbeat throughout the session," wrote EBL Securities Research in their daily market commentary on Sunday.

Moreover, investors have been enticed by the recent regulatory developments to enhance money flow in the market, thus creating a positive sentiment among them, they added.

Of the DSE scrips, 136 were in regular trading with enough buyers during the closing bell on Sunday, one-third higher than a week ago.

However, 264 stocks, including most of the blue-chip ones, were still out of trading as their prices were stuck on the floor prices, and the buyers were not interested in paying prices artificially held by the floor mechanism imposed by the securities regulator at the end of July last year.

Blue-chip index DS30 was almost flat with a 0.015% increase to 2,209.77, while Shariah-compliant scrips' index DSES outperformed with a 0.26% gain.

The Dhaka bourse observed a decrease in participation as total turnover declined by 20.2% to Tk532 crore from Tk667 crore on Thursday.

On the sectoral front, IT dominated the trading board with 20.3% of the DSE turnover for the day, followed by food and allied with 11.1% and pharmaceuticals with 9.7% of the day's turnover.

Most of the sectors generated positive returns, of which paper, IT, and tannery were the big gainers with 2.2%, 1.8%, and 1.5% increases in their respective market capitalisations.

Travel and leisure led the corrections with a 2% decline in the sectoral market capitalisations – market value of all the shares. The jute and banking sectors were in marginal price corrections on Sunday.

On the DSE, 83 scrips advanced while 46 declined.

The port-city bourse Chittagong Stock Exchange also settled in green territory.