Bangladesh’s main bourse sees biggest gain

Bangladesh’s main bourse skyrocketed with the key index surging more than 5 percent Sunday, the biggest gains since 2013.
   Statistics available on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) website showed the main gauge of the market (DSEX), which was introduced in January, 2013, surged Sunday 232.23 points, or 5.596 percent to close at 4,382.06 points from Thursday’s finish.                                                       Among a total of 356 issues traded Sunday, 346 registered gains and 6 incurred losses while 4 remained unchanged.
   Total turnover reached 4.11 billion taka on Sunday from about 2.67 billion taka on Thursday.
   Earlier on Jan. 15, 2017, the benchmark DSEX rose 1.49 percent or 79.91 points, to close at 5,422.79 points, the highest after its launch with 4,055.90 points on Jan. 28, 2013.
   Stockbrokers and market insiders said DSE was buoyed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s instructions to prop up the ailing bourse.
   Hasina Thursday met the capital market high-ups after lawmakers in the parliament sought her intervention to stop blood bath in the market which maintained sliding trend for a long time.
   Hasina asked for prompt measures for restoring investors’ confidence.
   Market insiders said small investors are panicked as the market has been falling steadily since long, loosing hundreds of points.
   Also market insiders said most of the institutional investors, who have been suffering from liquidity crunch, were not at all active for long in the market.
   They said the premier’s instructions apparently helped investors’ confidence back in the market whose main index declined 24.8 percent in the past 52 weeks.  Enditem