Market picks up
Colombo Bourse witnessed a rather volatile trading session yesterday.
The benchmark indices which dropped in the morning session ended the day
with notable gains on speculation that the regulator may relax the
credit policy on broking firms.
ASI advanced by 67.32 index points (1.12%) and ended at 6,087.40
while sensitive MPI closed at 5,273.58 points, up 26.96 index points
(+0.51%). Market turnover picked up to Rs 2.1bn from the lower levels
recorded earlier.
Index heavy John Keells Holdings (Rs 481.7mn) was the major
contributor to the market turnover where nearly 1.6mn shares changed
hands as five off-the floor deals at a price of Rs 170.00 per share.
John Keells Holdings closed at Rs 170.00, a drop of Rs 4.30 (-2.5%).
Further retail investor favorite HVA Foods (Rs 153.3mn) and
Environmental Resources (Rs 114.7mn) made notable contributions to the
daily turnover and traded heavily during the day.
Further counters such as Environmental Resources warrants, Colombo
Land and Development and East West Properties were among the mostly
traded stocks.
All the sectors gained during the day except Diversified Holdings
sector.
Drop in prices of diversified sector listed stocks namely Hayleys by
Rs 14.70, Hemas Holdings by Rs 1.00, John Keells Holdings by Rs 4.30 and
Aitken Spence Holdings by Rs 0.30 led the sector index downward.
Meanwhile two crossings were recorded in United Motors and Royal
Ceramics where 335,000 and 500,000 shares changed hands at a price of Rs
150.00 and Rs 135.00 per share respectively. Foreign participation was
relatively high compared to previous days and it stood at 20.0% of the
total market activity. At the end of the trading foreign investors were
the net buyers with a net foreign inflow of Rs.107.3mn. Lanka Securities
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