Dhaka, Bangladesh — The Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), Bangladesh’s main stock market, experienced a significant downturn last week, with both trading volume and key index suffering a major decline. Over the five trading days from September 14 to 18, the market was in a downward trend for three of them. All major index dropped by over 1%, while more than two-thirds of securities saw a fall in price. Average daily turnover decreased by nearly 39%, and market capitalization also saw a slight dip.
Major Index Fall Sharply
According to DSE data, the main price index, DSEX, dropped by 75 points, or 1.34%, to settle at 5,450 points. This is a notable decline from its previous week’s close of 5,524 points. The DS-30, an index tracking the top 30 companies, fell by 44 points, or 2.04%, reaching 2,107 points. The DSES, a Shariah-based index, also saw a drop of 18 points, or 1.51%, to 1,178 points.
Out of the 397 securities traded on the DSE last week, the price of only 68 increased, while 306 declined and 23 remained unchanged. An additional 16 listed securities were untraded throughout the week.
Turnover Plummets by 39%
The market took a substantial hit in turnover. The average daily turnover for the week was BDT 701.07 crore, a sharp decrease from the previous week’s average of BDT 1,149.66 crore. This represents a weekly drop of BDT 448.59 crore, or 39.02%, in daily average turnover. The total turnover for the five-day trading period stood at BDT 3,505.33 crore, compared to BDT 5,748.31 crore the week before.
The Pharmaceutical and Chemical sector led in trading, with a daily average turnover of BDT 95.39 crore. The banking sector was second with BDT 80.14 crore, and the engineering sector came in third with BDT 79.10 crore. Other key sectors included Textiles (BDT 75.25 crore) and Food & Allied (BDT 49.17 crore).
Market Capitalization and Sectoral Returns
Market capitalization also saw a slight decrease of BDT 145.87 crore over the five trading days. By the end of Thursday, the DSE’s market capitalization was BDT 7,24,466.72 crore, a minimal drop from BDT 7,24,612.59 crore the previous week.
An analysis of sectoral returns reveals a negative trend across most sectors. Only five sectors showed positive returns for the week. The highest positive return came from the Corporate Bond sector at 2.87%, followed by Service & Real Estate at 2.62%. Other positive-returning sectors were Textiles (0.70%), Engineering (0.61%), and Cement (0.47%).
Conversely, the Financial Institutions sector saw the highest negative return at 6.50%. This was followed by Travel & Leisure at 5.25% and Life Insurance at 4.54%.
Chittagong Stock Exchange Mirrors DSE’s Decline
The Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) experienced a similar downturn. Over the past week, all of its indices fell. The main index, CASPI, dropped by 1.17% and the CSCX by 1.14%, settling at 15,338 and 9,419 points, respectively. The CSE-30 and CSE-50 indices also declined by 1.66% and 1.25%, to 13,409 and 1,162 points, respectively.
Total turnover on the CSE was BDT 67.06 crore, down from BDT 92.27 crore the previous week, marking a decrease of BDT 25.21 crore. Of the 312 securities traded on the CSE, 89 saw a price increase, 195 declined, and 28 remained unchanged.
