Stocks witnessed choppy trading in early trading on Thursday as investors mostly followed cautious just ahead of budget declaration.
Finance Minister A H M Mustafa Kamal is set to place the national budget for the FY 2019-20 today at 3:00pm.
Earlier, Mr. Kamal pledged that there would be many incentives for the stock market in the upcoming budget.
Following the previous day’s modest correction, the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) and the Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) opened on positive note.
Within first 15 minutes of trading, the key index of the country’s prime bourse advanced 8.0 points while the CSE All Share Price Index (CASPI) of port city’s bourse gained 10 points at 10:45am.
After that the indices started to decline as the session progressed.
After 30 minutes of trading, the DSEX lost more than 5.0 points while the CSE All Share Price Index (CASPI) of port city’s bourse fell 2.0 points at 11:00am when the report was filed.
DSEX, the prime index of the DSE, went down by 5.56 points or 0.10 per cent to stand 5,464 points at 11:00am.
The DS30 index, comprising blue chips, lost 3.37 points to reach at 1,913 points till then. However, the DSE Shariah Index saw a fractional gain of 0.16 point to stand at 1,241 points.
Turnover, the important indicator of the market, stood at Tk 1.26 billion on DSE when the report was filed at 11:00am.
Newly listed Silco Pharmaceuticals was the most traded stocks till then with shares worth Tk 100 million changing hands, closely followed by JMI Syringes, Peoples Insurance, BBS cables and Genex Infosys.
Of the issues traded till then, 135 advanced, 118 declined and 60 remained unchanged on the DSE trading floor.
The port city’s bourse – the Chittagong Stock Exchange – (CSE) also saw downward trend till then with CSE All Share Price Index- CASPI-shedding 2.0 points to stand at 16,735 points, also at 11:00am.
The Selective Category Index – CSCX –also fell 1.61 points to stand at 10,141 points till then.
Of the issues traded till then, 43 advanced, 48 declined 21 advanced and 21 issues remained unchanged with Tk 61 million in turnover.