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| Saturday, 21 June 2003 |
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Colombo Bourse gathers momentum by Chandani Jayatilleke The Colombo Bourse's All Share Price Index (ASPI) almost reached the psychologically important 1000 level yesterday and finally closed at 995 points, up from 971.3 points of the previous trading day. The last time the indices touched 1000 points was on January 17, 1995. Stock Market analysts said that the 1000 level is within the reach and probably would cross this level in the next trading week. The Milanka index also moved up to 1,913.1 points from 1,847.1 and the total turnover was an impressive Rs. 772 million. Local investors dominated the market to bring the domestic purchases to Rs. 703.65 million and sales to Rs. 732.67 million. Foreign purchases accounted for Rs. 68.5 million and sales Rs. 39.5 million. The Bank and finance, Beverage food tobacco, chemicals pharmaceuticals, construction Engineering, Hotels, Investment Trust, Manufacturing, Motors and Trading sector indices moved up significantly to bring the main indices into reasonable levels, the analysts said. In overall, stock prices continued to advance throughout the week, as the sentiment remained bullish for the third consecutive week. The ASPI closed at 972 points while the MPI reached 1847.1 points on Thursday. The strong buying pressure resulted in a negligible correction, as the ASPI recovered from an eight point decline in early trading on Thursday. NDB (22%) together with NDB Bank (28%) contributed to almost half of Thursday's turnover of Rs.457 million, Hasitha Premarathne of HNB Stock Brokers said. He added that investors have full confidence on the market at present, buoyed by international support towards Sri Lanka specially after the donor conference in Tokyo. "The US Government's strongly worded statement which said that LTTE should give up the use of violence as a political weapon adds more pressure on the LTTE to get beck to the negotiation table, thus improving the investor confidence," Premarathne said. He said: "We feel that the LTTE's willingness to discuss the core issues with the Norwegians, would add momentum to the prevailing positive sentiment in the bourse, thus improving the investor confidence. Market has appreciated despite the LTTE's pull out from talks, as the investors have weighted the chances of war to be little. Therefore we believe that a resumption of discussions becomes a necessity, for the market to sustain above 1000 levels." Contributing to yesterday's turnover large parcels of shares of blue chips such as Aitken Spence, Asian Hotels, Ceylinco Seylan, Colombo Land, Dipped Products, Distilleries, Grain Elevators, Haycarb, Hayleys, HNB (Non voting), Merchant Bank, National Development Bank, Nations Trust and NDB Bank were sold. The top five gainers of the day were Commercial Bank, Beruwala Walk Inn, Ferntea Ltd, Chemanex and Kotagala. Angelo Ranasinghe of the Bartleet Mallory Stock Brokers said that the Bourse is heading towards reaching 1000 level, which means more trading and investments could take place on the market. "The 1,000 level is a psychological factor and that will be a real encouragement for more investors to come into the market," he said. He added that there will be a 'correction' in the market following this success. "However, when there are corrections, there are 'takers', so that market recovers," he said. |
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