Turnover at DSE lowest in a year

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FE Report
Dhaka stocks dropped Monday with the turnover hitting the lowest level since January 06 this year. Most investors preferred to remain cautious in trading before general election.
The continuous fall of turnover figure reflected the investors' cautious mood, analysts say.
Trading at the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) began with a downbeat note from the very outset. Before recovering a few points in the final hour of the trade, the benchmark index shed over 44 points just after the mid session.
The benchmark DSE General Index (DGEN), All Shares Price Index (DSI) and DSE20 Index (DS20) comprising blue chips lost 29.20 points, 24.23 points and 34.98 points to close at 2507.69, 2073.72 and 2077.94 respectively.
Prices of most shares were down on the day. Of the total 215 issues traded, 46 advanced, 158 declined and 11 remained unchanged.
"Most of the investors, including the institutional ones, remained cautious before national election scheduled for December 29, affecting the market," said Abdul Awal, managing director of Multi Securities Limited.
The turnover marked a significant decline in recent days due to year-end loan adjustment of the financial institutions, lowering the capacity of many institutions to inject fresh fund into the stock markets, he added.
"Another reason is that the investors could not sell their holdings as they failed to afford the losses due to the prevailing protracted bear-run," Awal said adding that the institutional investors should come forward to shore up the market.
The day's total turnover slumped to Tk 1.09 billion, the lowest since January 6 this year when the turnover was Tk 1.10 billion, against previous day's Tk 1.34 billion.
The market capitalisation declined to Tk 961.20 billion from Tk 969.59 billion on Sunday. Beximco Limited was the top turnover leader with shares worth Tk 109.14 million traded on the day.
Beximco Pharma, Uttara Bank, Summit Power, ACI Formulations Limited, Shinepukur Ceramics Limited, BRAC Bank, Grameen S2 Mutual Fund, National Bank Limited (NBL) and Lanka Bangla Finance Limited were the day's rest of the top 10 turnover leaders.