Sri Lanka stocks fell for a second consecutive day on Thursday, after a string of fresh closing highs, as the bourse's top overseas funds took a holiday for the Chinese New Year, brokers said. The Colombo all-share index, which hit an all-time closing high of 1,716.71 points on Tuesday, fell a provisional 0.14 percent, or 2.37 points, to 1,702.99 points.
The bourse has gained more than 12 percent so far this year on hopes of upbeat earnings in the third-quarter to end-December, due for release in coming weeks, as well as gains in construction stocks seen benefiting from post-tsunami rebuilding.
"Because of the Chinese new year, there were no fund managers on the foreign side ... Most foreign funds are based in Hong Kong and Singapore," said Mahesh Pieris at Asia Capital Securities.
The Milanka index, which tracks the most liquid and highly capitalised stocks, rose a provisional 0.3 percent to 2,351.22 points, helped by low volume buying in John Keells Holdings Ltd, which rose 0.18 percent at 137 rupees.
The local unit of Indian Oil Corp, Lanka IOC fell 0.47 percent to 53 rupees after its third-quarter net profit more than doubled to 527.6 million rupees.
Market turnover was 321.9 million rupees, with foreign purchases light at just 20 million rupees.
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