Dhaka stocks fell heavily in the past week, as panic driven investors offloaded shares in all but one of the sessions amid the ongoing economic worries in the country.
DSEX, the key index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange, lost 143.63 points, or 2.54 per cent, over the past week to close at 5,517.42 points May 16, after gaining 45.40 points in the previous week.
Market operators said that investors were reacting to rising economic worries in the country.
The foreign exchange reserves of the country fell to $13.76 billion, with the gross reserves dropping to $18.26 billion on May 12, marking a 10-year low, according to Bangladesh Bank data.
Market operators said that the Bangladesh Bank鈥檚 decision on increasing repo rates, which might lead to interest rate hikes in the money market impacted negatively on the capital market, as investors might shift funds to banks.
The devaluation of the taka against the US dollar might add to the depressed state of the market, they added.
They also said that multiple other factors were working behind the prolonged bearish trend of stocks, such as lack of investor confidence amid economic woes in the country and global geopolitical tensions, liquidity crisis in banks and sudden change of policies.
In the past 13 weeks, the market moved forward in only three weeks.
Out of the 392 issues traded in the past week, 85 advanced, 290 declined and 17 remained unchanged in the past week.
With the decrease of the investors鈥� activity, the weekly turnover of DSE witnessed a dive, by 20.43 per cent to Tk聽3,821.41 crore in the past week compared with that of Tk聽4,802.72 crore in the previous week.
Investors were mostly active in pharmaceutical scrips, followed by textile and food shares.
EBL Securities in its weekly market commentary said that growing concerns regarding the market momentum following the proposal to impose taxes on capital gains on the next budget led investors to trim their exposure to equity investments and stay observant of the market鈥檚 trend that allowed the bears to regain dominance across the trading floor.
The DSE Shariah index decreased by 30.41 points, or 2.45 per cent, to close at 1,212.16 points in the past week.
The DS30 index lost 41.25 points, or 2.05 per cent, to finish at 1,973.99 points.
eGeneration topped the turnover chart in the past week.
Asiatic Laboratories, Taufika Foods and Lovello Ice-cream, Navana Pharmaceuticals, Best Holdings, Orion Infusion, Golden Son, Alif Industries, Far East Knitting & Dyeing Industries and Advent Pharma were the other turnover leaders.
