Dhaka stocks rise sharply as investors upbeat about polls

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FE Report
Dhaka stocks rose sharply Sunday with the benchmark index DGEN crossing the 2700-mark after five weeks on a strong buying support from the small investors, upbeat about the general polls to be held today (Monday).
The market capitalisation crossed the Tk 1.0 trillion-mark after nearly three and a half months. With the significant gain on the day, the benchmark index recovered 144 points in three straight sessions.
Most of the share prices increased as out of 231 issues traded, 203 gained, only 19 declined and nine remained unchanged. The gain was led by non-banking financial institution, insurance and banking issues.
Trading at the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) started with an upward trend from the very outset as the main index kept going up from beginning to end.
The benchmark DSE General Index (DGEN), the All Shares Price Index (DSI) and the DSE20 (DS20) index comprising blue chip issues rose 98.45 points, 82.33 points and 95.56 points to close at 2728.60, 2258.39 and 2291.71 respectively.
"The investors reacted positively about the national polls. They were relieved that a free, fair and credible election would be held, making their investment safe," said Salahuddin Ahmed Khan, DSE chief executive officer.
The individual investors' participation in trading was bigger than the institutional investors who were preparing to enter the market in coming months after completing the year-end loan adjustments, he added.
A few institutional investors, however, started to pump their funds into the market, Khan said.
The day's total turnover declined slightly to Tk 2.90 billion against the previous day's Tk 2.93 billion. The market capitalisation rose to Tk 1.0 trillion from Tk 997.62 billion of Wednesday.
Midas Finance was the day's top turnover leader with shares worth Tk 286.92 million traded Sunday.
Summit Power, Titas Gas, NBL, Grameen Scheme Two Mutual Fund, ACI Limited, Beximco Limited, Shinepukur Ceramics Limited, Uttara Bank and ACI Formulations Limited were the day's rest of the top ten turnover leaders.
The share price of the Midas Finance saw the biggest gain posting 14.77 per cent rise to close at Tk 402.00.
The day's other top gainers were Peoples Insurance, Samata Leather, Asia Pacific Insurance, United Insurance, Safko Spinning, Glaxo SmithKline, Agrani Insurance, Standard Insurance and Rupali Insurance.
Bangla Process, Dulamia Cotton, Maq Enterprise, Zeal Bangla, Bionic Food, Meghna Pet, Renwick Jajneswar, Modern Cement, Wonder Toys and Shyampur Sugar were the top losers on the day.