Stock Market cautious over Israel-Hamas conflict

By HiranH.Senewiratne

Trading activities on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE)were gloomy and volatile yesterday as foreign and local investors were worried over the Israel and Hamas war situation in the West Asia region. This created a wait-and-see sentimet among investors.That resulted in the market to perform in a negative manner, stock market analysts said.

Most of foreign investors are worried that Hamas is being backed by Iran’ which is a nuclear super power in the world.

Amid those developments bothindices moved down wards.

All Share Price Index down by 88 58 points while S and P SL-20 down by 35.88 points.

Turnover stood at Rs 1.15 billion with two crossings. Those crossings were reported in JKH;which crossed 389,000 shares to the tune of Rs193 million and Melstacope 264,000shares crossed to the tune of Rs 20.7millionand its share price traded at Rs 78.50.

In the retail market top seven companiest hat mainly contributed to the turnover were JKH Rs 249 million (1.9million shares traded), Aitken Spence Rs 206million (1.5millionshares traded),CT Holdings Rs 89.9 million(368,000 shares traded), TJ Lanka Rs 34.1 million (991,000 shares traded), Capital Alliance Rs 33.8 million (527,000 shares traded)

First Capital Treasuries Rs 32.5 million (703,400 shares traded) and Dialog Axita Rs 32.3 million (3.1 million shares traded).During the day 31million share volumes changed hands in 9000 transactions.

Yesterday, the Central Bank announced the US dollar rate. The buying rate was Rs 318.17 and the selling rate Rs 328. 85.