Stocks in Dhaka saw a sharp decline last week, with the DSEX falling below 5,300 for the first time in three months as anxious investors sold off to prevent further portfolio losses.

The market remained dominated by sellers throughout the week, extending its losing streak for the fourth consecutive week.

The market started the week in free fall, hitting session lows across all four days as retail investors, in particular, engaged in panic selling.

The main index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), DSEX, finally settled at 5,258, down over 164 points or 3.03 percent from the previous week. The DSEX has lost 476 points in the last four weeks.

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Investors concerned continued to shed their holdings after noting that heavy-weight issues, including mutational companies, continued to fall in the past few weeks, putting further pressure on indices.

Investors preferred to trim their equity exposures and adopted a wait-and-see approach amid uncertainties surrounding earnings declarations for June-ending companies.

Macroeconomic and regulatory uncertainties also acted as negative catalysts that ignited the selling spree, allowing the bears to retain control for a prolonged period.

DSEX, the broad index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange, lost 164.1 points, or 3.0 percent, to settle at 5,258 points. Investors' participation in the market continued to fall by 13.3 percent to TK 3,180 million as compared to TK 3,667 million in the previous week. 

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Investors were primarily active in the banking sector (20.4%), followed by the pharmaceutical sector (16.5%) and the IT sector (11.3%). Sectors closed in the red, with the services sector (-8.8%) experiencing the largest decline.

Five large-cap stocks such Islami Bank, Brac Bank, British American Tobacco, Renata and Beacon Pharma together accounted for one-fourth of the index's decline during the week, according to EBL Securities.

This week, Tk 52 billion was wiped out from the market capitalization of the DSE, which now stands at Tk 6,691 billion. Over the past four consecutive weeks, the market capitalisation has declined by a total of Tk 242 billion.

The market capitalisation is calculated by multiplying a company’s total number of outstanding shares by its current market price.

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The blue-chip DS30 index, a group of 30 prominent companies, also lost 54 points to close at 1,930 while the DSES index, which represents Shariah-based companies, shed 32 points to 1,174.