Foreign investors to the fore

Hiran H. Senewiratne

BOURSE:During the day’s trading at the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) yesterday there was active participation by foreign investors despite the LTTE attack in Colombo, sources said.

Although the market was dropping initially it began to recover later, Business Development Manager Bartleet Mallory Stockbrokers (Pvt) Limited Angelo Ranasinghe told the Daily News.

He said that during the last few days there was a marked improvement in foreign buying while the local investors were sidelined.

Ranasinghe said it is high time prospective investors invested in the stock market when the market is relatively low to obtain medium to long-term returns. When the market is weak there are a lot of investment opportunities to buy shares on stocks.

Further, since the foreign investors are active in the market, sidelining them from the market would cause a huge impact.

Both indices, namely, All Share Price Index (ASPI) and Milanka Price Index were down. ASPI went down by -4 points and Milanka Index showed a downward trend of -8 points during the yesterday’s trading.

The total turnover during the day was Rs 438 million, which bulk of money, came from John Keells Holdings (JKH), which is 2.4 million numbers of shares traded. It is said that 83 per cent of JHK shares were bought by foreign investors and the balance bought by local investors.