Block trades make 99% of SME boars turnover

The daily turnover at the small capital platform of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) stood at Tk21.25 crore on Tuesday, where 99% came from block market transactions.

A block market is where buyers and sellers set share prices in advance and then carry out the trade. Shares cannot be bought or sold for less than Tk5 lakh here. 

According to market insiders, investors prefer trading shares through the block market rather than trading through the main platform. The securities regulator opened the block market at the SME platform on 21 May. 

On Tuesday, shares of 15 companies at the SME board were traded at Tk21.03 crore through the block market. Among them, BD Paints, Wonderland Toys, and Mamun Agro were the most traded stocks. 

Wonderland Toys was the highest gainer on the SME platform with 9.97% gain, followed by BD Paints and MK Footwear.

On Tuesday, the SME platform index DSMEX jumped by 47 points to reach 1,440, compared to the previous trading session. On the day, 13 issues advanced and 2 declined.

The small capital platform or the SME board was launched in 2021. Initially, in order to be considered eligible for trading shares in this platform, there was an obligation to invest at least Tk1 crore in the shares of listed companies.

Eligible investors had to fill in a number of forms in order to trade on this platform.

Because of a capital crunch and a low number of investors, the platform had not gained much popularity. Therefore, the process of trading shares on this platform was later made simple, and the minimum investment requirement was halved.

But, as the investors did not show much interest even after those measures, the minimum investment was further reduced to Tk20 lakh for each investor.