Israel-Hamas conflict weighing down on local bourse; fuel crisis feared

By Hiran H.Senewiratne

Huge down-turn pressure was witnessed at the CSE due to gloomy internal and external sector conditions yesterday. Apart from that, most Asian stock markets also went down anticipating a global fuel and energy crisis due to the Israel- Hamas war situation that erupted a couple of days ago, stock market analysts said.

“A lot of people are on a sort of wait-and-see approach and with that some are thinking they can sell out and come back in later, an analyst said. “There’s selling pressure, margin calls are starting to come, and people are looking at exiting and coming back, market analysts added.

Amid those developments both indices moved downwards. The All Share Price Index went down by 161.59 points and S and P SL20 declined by 50.9 points. Turnover stood at Rs 1.1 billion with two crossings. Those crossings were reported in JKH, which crossed 146,000 shares to the tune of Rs 27.8 million; its shares traded at Rs 190 and Distilleries crossed 1 million shares to the tune of Rs 26 million.

In the retail market top seven companies that mainly contributed to the turnover were; Capital Alliance Rs 151 million (2.4 million shares traded), Hayleys Rs 109.6 million (1.2 million shares traded), JKH Rs 99.9 million (530,000 shares traded), Lanka IOC Rs 51.4 million (471,000 shares traded), Expolanka Holdings Rs 43.1 million (344,000 shares traded), Sampath Bank Rs 38.8 million (593,000 shares traded) and Commercial Bank Rs 28.9 million (341,000 shares traded). During the day 54.3 million share volumes changed hands in 14000 transactions.

Yesterday the US dollar buying rate was Rs 318.30 and selling rate Rs 328.93.