Weekly analysis: Stocks break five-week winning streak

Stocks witnessed marginal correction last week, snapping a five-week winning streak, as risk-averse investors opted to book profit on sector specific stocks.

Market insiders said stocks fell marginally as investors booked profit, particularly from December year-ending companies like bank and non-bank financial institution stocks.

Accordingly, banking sector posted the highest correction of 3.55 per cent with prices of 29 banks suffered losses, out of 30.

It was followed by non-bank financial institutions with 1.32 per cent loss, snapping the recent gain. Textile and food sectors also lost 1.94 per cent and 0.53 per cent respectively.

In a major development last week, the Chinese consortium, which bought 25 per cent stake of DSE, formally became a strategic partner of the prime bourse.

The week featured four trading days instead of usual five as the market remained closed on Sunday on the occasion of Janmashtami. Of them, first two sessions suffered losses while last two posted marginal gain.

Week-on-week, the DSEX, the prime index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), went down by 26.39 points or 0.47 per cent to settle at 5,574.

"The negative movement in the index is driven by downward trend in bank and financial institutions stocks," commented LankaBangla Securities.

The DS30 index, comprising blue chips, also lost 2.19 points to close at 1,958. However, the DSE Shariah Index advanced 9.05 points to end at 1,278.

According to International Leasing Securities, the investors preferred to book gain over the recent price surge.

The stockbroker noted that selling of shares mostly from bank, textile and financial institution sectors contributed to the fall in indices.

Turnover, another indicator of the market, however, soared to Tk 30.53 billion from Tk 29.19 billion in the week before though the last week saw four trading days.

The daily turnover averaged Tk 7.63 billion, registering an increase of 30.74 per cent than the previous week's average of Tk 5.83 billion.

The average total turnover of the week soared as dividend expectation of June-ending companies prompted investors to inject fresh fund in the market, said the International Leasing

The power sector topped the week's turnover chart, grabbing 18 per cent of the week's total turnover. It was closely followed by the engineering sector with 17 per cent and textile 12 per cent.

Block trade contributed 2.80 per cent to the total turnover with stocks like Square Pharma, National Life Insurance, Grameenphone and United Power dominating the block trade board.

The market capitalisation of the DSE advanced slightly 0.03 per cent.

It was Tk 3,962 billion on the opening day of the week. It rose to Tk 3,963 billion on Thursday, the last trading day of the week.

Among other major sectors, power posted the highest gain of 4.02 per cent, followed by engineering with 2.62 per cent and pharmaceuticals 0.39 per cent.

The losers took a strong lead over the gainers as out of 339 traded issues, 216 closed lower, 108 ended higher and 15 issues remained unchanged on the DSE floor.

Khulna Power Company topped the week's turnover chart with 28.49 million shares worth Tk 2.55 billion changing hands.

The next other turnover leaders were BBS Cables with Tk 948 million, Confidence Cement Tk 892 million, Aman Feed Tk 824 million and The Peninsula Chittagong Tk 752 million.

Khulna Power was also the week's best performer, posting a gain of 29.91 per cent to close at 99.90 each on Thursday.

Savar Refractories was the worst loser, as its price plunged 21 per cent last week.

The port city's bourse, Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE), also finished marginally lower with the CSE All Share Price Index - CASPI -losing 42 points to settle at 17,202.

The Selective Categories Index - CSCX - also fell 17 points to close at 10,426 points.

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