Stocks post marginal gain

Stocks posted marginal gain Monday after two sessions fall as investors took position on large cap stocks, especially GrameenPhone.

A new issue - Tung Hai Knitting & Dyeing made debut Monday and topped the gainers' chart with 178 per cent gain. Each share of the company traded between Tk 33.5 and Tk 27.5 on the prime bourse before closing at Tk 27.8 from its issue price of Tk 10.

A total of 9.39 million shares changed hands, generating a turnover of Tk 276.52 million Monday. Tung Hai Knitting & Dyeing floated 35 million ordinary shares of Tk 10 each and raised a fund worth Tk 350 million through IPO.

DSEX, the prime index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) ended at 4,554.97 points, gaining 5.45 points or 0.11 per cent from previous session.

The other two indices also ended in the green. The DS30, comprising blue chips gained 8.85 points or 0.51 per cent to close at 1,722.68 points. The DSE Shariah Index went up by 7.54 points or 0.71 per cent to close at 1,064.91 points.

Turnover rose slightly but, remained sluggish. The total turnover amounted to Tk 5.01 billion on DSE which was 1.42 per cent higher over the previous session's value of Tk 4.94 billion.

The investors' attention was mainly focused on textile, pharmaceuticals and engineering - the sectors that, accounted for 16 per cent, 15 per cent and 12 per cent respectively of the day's total turnover.

"Benchmark index gained marginally backed by handsome return posted by telecommunication and cement stocks," commented LankaBangla Securities.

IT, telecommunication and cement sector gained 5.03 per cent, 3.90 per cent and 2.23 per cent respectively.

Though most of the major sectors like bank and NBFI posted mild negative return, the largest capitalized stock GP pulled the index to the green zone as the stock gained 4.23 per cent alone, said the stock broker.

"The main DSEX index seems to face strong resistance at the 4,600-level for which a strong support from volume is required to break the cluster and make way for the market to edge higher," said Zenith Investments.

Except for the debutant Tung Hai, the turnover was mostly dominated by large cap stocks, where seven out of top ten stocks were large cap, said the merchant bank.

Riding with GP, telecommunication was the top performing sector of the day while food and allied performed worst among the major sectors with 0.84 per cent loss.

Pharmaceuticals, banks and NBFIs went down by 0.75 per cent, 0.57 per cent and 0.12 per cent respectively.

Gainers outpaced losers as out of 288 issues traded, 129 advanced, 122 declined and 37 remained unchanged on the DSE floor.

Activities increased in the major bourse (DSE) where trade and volume were up by 11.19 per cent and 2.14 per cent respectively. A total of 0.129 million trades were executed with 121.36 million securities of trading volume.

The total market capitalisation on the DSE stood at Tk 3,047.29 billion against Tk 3,030.33 billion in the previous session.

GP was the day's most traded stocks with shares worth Tk 350.20 million changing hands followed by newly listed Tung Hai Knitting, Beximco, Summit Power and Beximco Pharma.

The port city bourse, Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) also closed positive with its Selective Categories Index - CSCX - gained 12.81 points to close at 8,596.83 points.

Losers beat gainers 105 to 69, with 34 issues remaining unchanged at the port city bourse that traded 11.88 million shares and mutual fund units, turnover value of Tk 396.75 million.