MARKET

Market drops slightly

The market dropped slightly with both the ASPI and MPI recording a week on week losses to close at 6751.29 and 6152.23, respectively. The ASPI decreased by 1.37% and the MPI decreased by 0.93%.

The weekly turnover value recorded an 11.45% decrease to Rs 8.61 billion, amounting to a daily average value of Rs 1.72 billion, when compared with last week's daily average turnover of Rs 1.95 billion. Grain Elevators, East West and Orient Garments accounted for 27.09% of the week's total turnover value. The number of shares traded decreased by 23.3%, averaging 85.09 million shares traded daily as against 110.94 million traded last week.

The Manufacturing sector led the turnover in value this week, accounting for 31.5% of turnover in value amounting to Rs 2.71 billion. The Banking and Finance sector was the second highest contributor to turnover, accounting for 14.0% amounting to Rs 1.20 billion. Third highest on the turnover value list was the Diversified sector with 13.7% or Rs 1.18 billion.

Volume of turnover for the week was dominated by the Manufacturing sector with 152.1 million shares being traded or 34.74% of volume of turnover. The Banking and Finance sector followed, representing 15.21% of total turnover volume, or 64.73 million shares traded.

Third highest contributor to turnover volume was the Land and Property sector, which accounted for 15.11% or 64.27 million shares. Market capitalization as at close was Rs 2411.64 billion recording a loss of 1.4% or Rs 33.06 billion in value as against last week's close.

Eastern Merchants was the major price gainer with a 221.9% increase this week to close at Rs 3025.9 from last week's closing price of Rs 940.

East West was the second largest price gainer, recording a 69.8% increase to close at Rs 23.6 from Rs 13.9. Harischandra Mills gained 52.6% from its previous price of Rs 1900 to close at Rs 2900.

Singalanka was the major price loser over the week, declining 28.8% to close at Rs 1559.6.

Guardian Capital and Horana Plantations Plc were also major losers with Guardian Capital decreasing 16.3% to Rs 173.9 and Horana Plantations Plc declining 13.4% to close at Rs 58.3. Lake House Printing and Riverrina Hotels declined 13.2% and 13.0% respectively.

Foreign investors remained net sellers closing the week with a net selling position amounting to Rs 546.08 million, relative to last week's net selling position of Rs 531.68 million. Foreign purchases for the week total to Rs 478.3 million as against Rs 526.9 million recorded last week.

Blue Diamonds topped the volume list recording 61.87 million shares changing hands representing 14.54% of the aggregate share volume. East West contributed 8.99% of aggregate share volume with 38.24 million shares changing hands.

Point of view

Negative retail sentiment dominated markets with the bourse recording a steady, albeit marginal, decline over the week. Corporate earnings though strong, failed to negate the losses witnessed in the market. Quarterly earnings to date from the Banking and Finance sector, Chemical and Pharmaceutical sector, Food and Beverages sector and Hotels and Travel sector were all positive; Plantations sector earnings however were mostly negative.

The SEC commissioner's decision over the broker credit request is likely to dominate market sentiment over the week ahead. Strong corporate earnings are also likely to continue flowing in over the week. Despite the short-term volatility in markets, valuations on fundamentally sound stocks with earnings potential offer attractive investment opportunities at the current price levels especially as the market PER at close on Friday was 20.9x relative to this year's peak in February of 21.1. Acuity Stockbrokers Research

CICRA launches Certified Ethical Hacker training

CICRA Institute of Education launched the internationally acclaimed cutting-edge Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) training programme in Colombo. The five day training programme is part of CICRA's objective to arm Sri Lankan corporates against raising wave of cybercrimes worldwide.

The ongoing training is conducted by an international trainer accredited by US based International Council of E-Commerce Consultants (E-C Council). Participants of this training programme will receive CEH qualification from the E-C Council after completing an extensive examination.

CICRA has been accredited to train cyber soldiers to fight against newest forms of cyber terrorism that could cripple national security interests and corporate network structure following a partnership with E-C Council, which in turn has been endorsed by US Defence Department and the National Security Agency (NSA).

Under this partnership, CICRA will retain EC-Council accredited international trainers to coach and certify individuals in the specific network security discipline including security officers, auditors, security professionals, site administrators, and anyone who is concerned about the integrity of the network infrastructure in Sri Lanka.

For the first time in Sri Lanka, CICRA is running EC-Council certified combo training programmes in Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI), Licensed Penetrating Tester (LPT) and Advanced Security Training in Advanced Penetration Testing (APT), Digital Mobile Forensics Deep Dive, Advanced Application Security (AAS), Advanced Network Defence and Cryptography Deep Dive.

A Certified Ethical Hacker is a skilled professional who understands and knows how to look for the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in target systems and uses the same knowledge and tools as a malicious hacker, CICRA Director Boshan Dayaratne said.

Computer investigation techniques are being used by police, government and corporate entities globally and many of them turn to EC-Council for the Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator (CHFI) Training and Certification Programme.

CICRA is also offering training in advanced security testing through EC-Council's Centre for Advanced Security Training (CAST) that has been created to address the need for highly technical and advanced security training for information security professionals. E-C Council is a member-based organization that certifies individuals in cyber security and e-commerce and is the owner and developer of 16 globally recognized security certificates. Its certificate programmes are offered in over 84 countries around the world. EC-Council has trained over 90,000 individuals and certified more than 40,000 members worldwide.