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Colombo Bourse witnessed a rather volatile trading session today. 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
