Stocks extend losing streak for third day

Stocks witnessed yet another sluggish trading session Sunday, with turnover falling further, as risk-averse investors continued to book profit on quick-gaining stocks.
Analysts said the market faced another downbeat session as investors were mostly on profit taking mood over the last few days' price surge in sector specific issues.
"Selling pressure on sector specific large-cap issues, especially from fuel and power, engineering, food and allied and bank dragged down the market for another session," said an analysts at a leading brokerage firm.
The market opened with a slight upward movement but could not sustain the momentum as the session progressed. After first one and a half hours trading, index started to drop significantly, finally closed 35.61 points lower.
DSEX, the prime index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), finished the session at 5,700.79, losing 35.61 points or 0.62 per cent over the previous session. DSEX lost more than 76 points in the past three consecutive sessions.
"The most large-cap stocks lost price, which could be the reason for such sharp fall of the broad index," said LankaBangla Securities, a stockbroker, in its regular market analysis.
The stockbroker noted that among the top 20 large-cap stocks, only 5 stocks gained price, whereas 15 stocks experience significant price fall.
The two other indices also finished lower. The DS30 index, comprising blue chips, fell 14.63 points or 0.68 per cent to settle at 2119.56. The DSE Shariah Index (DSES) lost 8.45 points or 0.64 per cent to close at 1,304.26.
Turnover, another important indicator of the market, also fell sharply to Tk 7.77 billion, which was more than 25 per cent lower than the previous day's value of Tk 10.16 billion.
The bank sector emerged as turnover leader after a single-session break, capturing 25 per cent of the day's total turnover value, followed by pharmaceuticals 14 per cent and engineering 13 per cent.
IDLC Investments, a merchant bank, said, "The market passed another negative session, with decline in 214 issues, as against rise in 86 issues".
The merchant bank noted that Southeast Bank and IFIC Bank did well, gaining 1.93 per cent and 1.70 per cent respectively, upon their declaration of dividend and annual earnings for the year ended on December 31, 2016.
AT Capital Partners, an asset management company, said, "Despite started positively, downtrend continued for the third consecutive sessions as most of the stocks face heavy sell pressure".
The AT Capital noted that sellers were more than double of buyers, reflecting investors' cautious stance towards market.
All the large-cap sectors showed negative performance except telecommunication which gained 0.28 per cent.
Fuel and power sector posted the highest loss of 0.98 per cent, closely followed by engineering 0.90 per cent, food and allied 0.61 per cent, pharmaceuticals 0.31 per cent, banks 0.29 per cent and non-bank financial institutions 0.26 per cent.
The port city bourse, the Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE), also closed lower with its Selective Categories Index - CSCX - losing 67.83 points to settle at 10,719.
Losers beat gainers as 148 issues closed lower, 69 closed higher and 20 remained unchanged on the CSE.
The port city bourse traded 16.36 million shares and mutual fund units' worth Tk 475 million in turnover.
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