Stocks finished almost flat on Wednesday amid choppy trading as most investors followed cautious stance.
Analysts said the investors' sentiment regarding the capital market remained weak due to some recent crisis.
"The institutional investors could not support the market more because of persistent liquidity shortage while fresh concern over the final selection of major bourse's strategic partner kept small investors watchful," said an analyst at a leading brokerage firm, seeking anonymity.
The securities' regulator, which has been against the selection of the Chinese consortium from the very beginning, on Tuesday sent a number of queries to the DSE about the consortium's proposal and asked it to submit reply along with tender documents by March 4.
The market started on downward trend and the core index of the major bourse fell more than 21 points within first 30 minutes of trading, however, it recovered the initial losses as the session progressed. Finally it ended 6.51 points higher.
DSEX, prime index of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), settled at 5,805, advancing 6.51 points or 0.11 per cent over the previous day.
Two other indices of the premier bourse also edged higher. The DS30 index, comprising blue chips, advanced 5.20 points or 0.24 per cent to finish at 2,146 and DSES (Shariah) index gained 4.87 points or 0.36 per cent to close at 1,361.
Trading activities remained low amid persistent liquidity shortage and the total amounted to Tk 3.90 billion, which was 21 per cent higher over the previous day's Tk 3.22 billion.
According to EBL Securities, the market edged higher as opportunity hunter investors opted for position taking in stocks at low prices.
The stockbroker noted that investors' buying binge spurred on stocks, especially from telecommunication, cement and engineering sectors.
Among the major sectors, engineering posted 1.0 per cent gain, followed by telecommunication with 0.80 per cent, pharmaceuticals 0.40 per cent, food & allied 0.40 per cent, fuel & power 0.30 per cent and financial institutions 0.10 per cent.
The banking sector faced 0.40 per cent correction.
The losers took a modest lead over the gainers as out of 335 issues traded, 150 closed lower, 131 closed higher and 54 remained unchanged on the DSE trading floor.
A total number of 93,655 trades were executed in the day's trading session with trading volume of 93.92 million securities
The market capilatisation of DSE stood at Tk 4,044 billion which was Tk 4,028 billion in the previous session.
However, the port city bourse CSE returned to the red with its CSE All Share Price Index - CAPSI- losing 16 points to settle at 17,726 and selective Categories Index - CSCX - falling 10 points to finish at 10,819.
Here too, the losers beat the gainers as 113 issues drifted lower, 77 gained and 37 remained unchanged on the CSE.
The port city bourse traded 6.94 million shares and mutual fund units worth more than Tk 280 million in turnover.
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