Every one was waiting for the trading to begin. The trading was slated to start at 1:00pm instead of the usual 11:00am. The bourse authorities curtailed the trading time by two hours fearing that more trading would mean a greater fall.
Investors at a brokerage house at Motijheel were watching the DSE president’s press conference live on a TV channel. But as the trading began at 1:00pm every one rushed towards the computer screens. Some of them were really in a mood to buy. But, within seconds, they found the prices of most of the scrip were much lower than that on Wednesday.
Shantanu bought 400 shares of a bank at the rate of Tk 1,325. He thought he had made a good deal as the closing price of the share stood at Tk 1,362 on Wednesday after its price had fallen steadily in the previous days.
Suddenly, Shantanu found the price falling further. And at 1:05pm, the share price nosedived to Tk 1,200. Shantanu just incurred further losses.
Within five minutes since the trading had begun the market took a sheer plunge of 600 points. And the trading was halted for the day as the DSE’s circuit-breaker on index was supposed to halt trading if its general index fell or rose by 225 points. Investors did not expect this. So soon!
‘How could this happen? How can the market fall by 600 points? Where is the circuit-breaker?’ asked Shantanu, who took share-trading as a profession after graduating from Jagannath University in 2008.
He said he borrowed Tk 5 lakh to buy shares as he had already lost Tk 5 lakh. Last month he bought shares of the bank at the rate of Tk 1,620, hoping that the bank would come up with good yearend dividends.
‘I am totally confused. I thought, after so many days’ of fall, today, at least, the market would rise,’ he said in a dejected mood. Other investors, however, failed to buy or sell any shares as the market was shut too fast.
Soon after the trading was halted, investors came out on the street in front of the Dhaka Stock Exchange building and vented their fury at the bourse authorities for the failure of the newly-introduced index circuit-breaker, which was supposed to halt trading as soon as the market lost or gained 225 points.
The DSE launched the circuit-breaker on Wednesday, when it halted trading after its general index dipped by 237 points. The decision to put the circuit-breaker in place was taken in a meeting of finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith with officials of the Bangladesh Bank and Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday morning to rein in the continued slide of the general index.
‘The circuit-breaker is but a mockery. We are losing every thing,’ shouted an agitated investor from a procession in front of the DSE building on Thursday.
As soon as the circuit-breaker halted the trading at 1:05pm, after the 600-point plunge, a reporter at a press conference in a city hotel asked DSE president Shakil Rizvi why it had failed.
Shakil said, ‘The circuit-breaker is operated manually. After refreshing the data on general index after five minutes of trading, we found the market had already fallen by 600 points and we stopped trading.’
Investors, however, were not happy with such a naïve explanation. ‘We lost further in the blink of an eye. Shakil should resignation. We want the finance minister, the Bangladesh Bank governor and the SEC chairman to resign too,’ chanted investors from a protest rally in front of the DSE building.
