Dhaka stocks ended flat in volatile trading on Wednesday posting a low turnover as the lack of confidence among investors and the liquidity crisis continued to haunt the market.
The benchmark general index of Dhaka Stock Exchange, or DGEN, crawled up by 0.017 per cent, or 0.97 points, to close the day at 5,727.80 points.
The day's turnover of the bourse, however, increased to Tk 296.01 crore from that of Tk 285.21 crore on the previous day.
Market operators said as some large investors on the day went into buying it pushed the share prices up in the opening hours. But, the early rise faded fast as a section of retail investors went into panic sell-offs seeing the market had continued to fall in the previous three trading sessions.
Announcement by the market regulators and stakeholders of taking various market stabilising measures perhaps made the investors even more confused and panicky, seeing none of those had been implemented yet, they said.
'Investors are panicked as they see all the regulatory moves failing to stabilise the market and many of them want to leave the market for good,' said a stockbroker.
'So, whenever market goes up they go for selling from the fear that the gaining streak may not last long,' he said.
He also said that on Wednesday many investors refrained from trading and took a wait-and-see policy as they could not sell out their shareholdings it would mean huge losses.
'But, even if some of them wanted to sell shares and leave the market, a huge negative balance in portfolios restricted them from doing that. Otherwise, the selling pressure today would have been greater as investors did not have the minimum confidence in the market,' he said.
The market was volatile throughout today's trading session and closed flat at the end, said BRAC EPL in its daily market commentary.
A section of retail investors, who had lead the street demonstrations in the last few weeks, on Wednesday met the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman to seek the capital market watchdog's help in bailing out their fellow investors of the cases lodged against them during the protest. They said 31 investors were charged for vandalism and creating nuisance in public during the demonstration on September 19.
SEC chairman M Khairul Hossain assured the investors he would look into the matter.
Grameenphone, the highest weighted issue on the DSE, lost value of Tk 3.3 or 2.10 per cent on Wednesday as the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission on Tuesday said the government would take legal action against GP to realise outstanding taxes and revenue worth Tk 3,034 crore.
Among the major sectors, bank declined by 0.26 per cent, while non-bank financial institutions advanced by 0.38 per cent, and fuel and power 0.09 per cent.
Lafarge Surma Cement was the highest traded scrip of the day with a transaction volume of Tk 20.18 crore. The rest of the turnover leaders on the top-10 list were Grameenphone, Eastern Housing, Beximco Synthetics, Beximco, National Bank Ltd, BD Thai Aluminium, Summit Power, Beximco Pharma, and City Bank.
Of the 257 issues traded on the day, 152 advanced, 90 declined, and 16 remained unchanged.
