ASI Today - 06.10.2017

So the ASI continued in the trend continuation. Once again the retailers kept busy going about trading their favourites.

The activity levels of the Plantation Sector increased, whilst the number of trades in the Banking Sector came 2nd. When Plantations witnessed 1845 transactions, with 75.5M in T/O, Banking gave 444.40 in T/O with 1133 trades. As the ASI brought in 922M of T/O, what contributed by Banks was about 48%. Manufacturing with 1191 trades became the 3rd heavily traded sector, but it was the 2nd highest Sector in terms of T/O with 247.1M.

MHDL was the highest traded counter, and along with this LDEV witnessing 232 trades dominated Land and Property Sector. However LDEV manages Agarapathana Plantations, hence it is more like a company that needs to be monitored with the Plantations than with L&P sector.

Sampath and Commercial Banks saw a lot of participation primarily by foreign and local investors, along side some local traders. Sampath saw a T/O 149.5M, in the normal board, whilst 154.5M came in from a Crossing. Sampath saw a high of 327, and Comb saw a high of 147.90.

Retailers kept mopping up Plantations with ELPL being the top trader, as MAL saw 341 trades. BALA came out of the accumulation to break out of 39. LDEV too witnessed mopping up yet it is trading below the present high of 12.80.

Tokyo saw a crossing of over 2M shares, perhaps the last stages of the Foreign selling. Need to keep an eye on this.

As mentioned yesterday I prefer to track the weekly ASI chart, and the key area to test is 6650. As the ASI closed at 6529 today it is about 130 points above. The 200 DMA looks a support at present which is around 6397 points.

ASI Today - 04.10.2017, weekly chart is looking great. Can expect a 100 point rise!!!

Today's Market was not that friendly for all retailers. Yet it offered opportunities for those who act with patience and plan. The T/O was huge, and totalled 2.44B.

As I've been commenting, (well it is not only me but many would agree), that those heavily traded stocks which had brought Retailers and Large traders to the Market has to Consolidate. They must be given some amount of breathing space to accumulate and get those impatient, directionless traders to exit, and sell, in the process allow those who see the potential of those counters to collect and wait for the next move. The noticeable feature is that this side way movement is not at all corrective, that is because the tiny pauses the stocks go into are treated as quick collections to be grabbed by many, thanks to the expected Profit growths in these counters.

As noticed the amount of transactions dropped in the ASI, after hitting an unbelievable number of 10204 trades on  the 2nd instant, it fell to 7220 in today's trades. This gives all Retailers that nothing goes up in one line nor vise versa. You must be geared and prepared for the worse case. UNLESS YOU KNOW TO MANAGE YOUR RISK you will be lost, and your trading will make you a loser. I suggest you to trade in small volumes and kick your GREED off.

When the Plantations and few other actively traded stocks went in a slow pace, the BANKS and a few S&P SL 20 counters dashed in with a vengeance. Commercial Bank Voting can never be traded by those short term traders. If that had to be taken up to it's rightful place, the Big Investors and Traders should get into action. That's what happened today. There were 3 major trades in COMB, 10 M @ 145, whilst 2.36M in 2 blocks went @ 146/=. All were bought by Foreigners. The next major trade was in HNB, with 102K traded @ 245.50.  In the Normal Board there were 326 transactions in COMB between 140.50 and 146.50, while closing @ 146.00. All though HNB was not in the top 25 heavily traded list it had 50 trades between 245 and 246.10, finally closing @ 246.00. JKH is trending at the higher end of the channel, between 160 and 165, closed @ 164/=. The major mind blower still is SAMP - with 165 trades and T/O of 27M, it traded between 320/= and 325/50.

As sectors we saw 1941 trades in the Banking sector chipping with a whopping T/O of 2.14B taking the BFI index up by 235 points, whilst the near 2nd was the Traders darling - Plantation Sector.  It saw 1648 trades with 63M in T/O, but it dropped marginally by 8.04 points.  Manufacturing was the 3rd highest traded with 954 trades, but dropping by 16.48 points. The 4th being Land & Property Sector where we saw 712 trades with the index being unchanged.

I expect Friday's trading to be somewhat lacklustre as it is a day between 3 holidays and being the last day of the week, but could be an occasion to go shopping if the retail stocks continue to retrace. Yet the bulls wont just give lightly on Banks and plantations.

WEEKLY ASI CHART - 100 points rise could be on the cards........ have a look at the chart.

BALA - Must consolidate to hit 40 and beyond

BALA - In 2012 there was a strong resistance area between 33 and 38, whilst it hit higher to test 44 as well. We could expect a consolidation in this area before the next trend continuation. As the expected fundamentals are strong we can not expect the bullish expectations to exacerbate just yet.
You need to accumulate on weakness, as this counter is certainly not done yet.

ASI Today - 03.10.2017

ASI - If yesterday was the day of the Retailers domain, today the game changed towards the Big guns. Turnover was relatively considerable, as it exceeded 1 billion to register at LKR 1,345,283,456. Momentum is turning out to be more towards a trend continuation in the overall market. But the trend witnessed in the retail savvy counters checked in for some breathing space vis a vis a consolidation. But too early to say it is corrective in nature. We need to give it time, perhaps 2 or 3 days. 


Mostly Traded stocks were:

Symbol	Share Volume	Trade volume	Change (Rs.)	Change Percentage (%)
ELPL.N0000	5,172,415	1,120	2	6.62
LCEM.N0000	3,605,998	624	-0.3	-3.75
MAL.N0000	2,009,025	522	0.2	1.63
LDEV.N0000	1,844,672	478	0	0
BALA.N0000	666,707	468	0	0
ACME.N0000	1,843,729	395	0.2	3.17

Whilst the stocks that came out of their consolidations were:

Symbol	Share Volume	Trade volume	Change (Rs.)	Change Percentage (%)
COMB.N0000	309,464	175	2.2	1.59
JKH.N0000	492,394	83	1	0.61
CFVF.N0000	186,404	112	1.5	4.34

One Stock that took my breath away was Sampath Bank. It screamed through to 320.10, finally to close at 320.00. This stock is trending up while there is a rights issue @ 245/00. As such need to keep our ears to the ground until it goes XR, and the Rights hit the market for trading.

TKYO, JKH and NEST had Crossing Trades totaling over 476 million.

Trend continuation is now in place and the resistance between 6500 and 6600 is the area the index needs to pierce through. Hope it will happen and head higher.

Plantations Index

PLT - Plantations moved into a long rally since late March of this year. It closed yesterday at 1083 area. Whilst the fib extension of the 1st uptrend from Late March to late May, suggests that the 161.8% completion takes place around 1097 points. But the momentum of the counters in the sector is not showing considerable retracements mainly due to the strong growth expectations in this sector, after many torrid and dismal years. However the time is not right to invest into these counters but has a lot of steam for traders. So they should sieze the opportunity and enjoy the ride by keeping strict money management techniques.

ASI Today - 02.10.2017

ASI - Closed 32 points ahead of the previous close at 6470.96 points. Turnover was 549.47M, lower than previous. But the transactions exceeded 10,204 that was stupendous, given the Turnover levels. This clearly showed the level of interest by Retailers in action. As such the Market was highly concentrated  on the Plantation Stocks, coupled with a few trading stocks.

Heavily Traded Stocks were:
Lanka Cement - 866 trades. T/O 33M, +1/50(22.73%)
Lankem Development - 784 Trades. T/O 35.4M, +1/10(10%)
Balangoda Plantations - 768 Trades. T/O 37.1M, +6.10(20%)
Malwatte Valley Plantations - 757 Trades. T/O 41.7M, +1.80(17.1%)
Malwatte Valley Plantations (Non Voting) - 657 Trades. T/O 20.6M, +1.90(18.63%)

Apart from the top 5 above Madulsima Plantations, ACME, Maskeliya Plantations and Lanka Orix Finance captured the Traders attention. Acme, LOFC and LCEM came in as new entrants to a much dominated Plantations counterparts.

However it was the S&P SL 20 heavy weights that took the ASI up. The major contributors were:

Ceylon Tobacco - 20 Trades. T/O 19.07M, +29/-(2.99%)
Cargills - 41 Trades. T/O 3.6M, +8.10(4.22%)
LOLC - 86 Trades. T/O 39.4M, +5/-(3.94%)
HNB - 23 Trades. T/O 13.4M, +5/-(2.13%)
Sampath - 72 Trades. T/O 22.8M, +1/50(.49%)
JKH - 49 Trades. T/O 13.7M, +1/50(.92%)

The movements we saw in the blue chips are encouraging, and we can expect a positive momentum for tomorrow as well.

There are day trading opportunities, but one must never trade without money management strategies.

There was one solitary LION trade that was over 20M(Crossing) chipping in 24M.

BFI - Banks, Finance and Insurance Index is ahead of the ASI

The All time high of the All Share Index was in Feb of 2011 @ 7825 points, but the Banking,Finance and Insurance sector index known as BFI has broken out of it's 2011 highs and hit the all time high in August of 2015. Therefore it is clear that this Sector is trading ahead of the ASI.
But as we know this sector as well as the Economy of the country is going through a lot of re-positioning, hence a lengthy consolidation can be seen in the price action of the index above 14000 points, with a strong support at 16000 which was an important support between 2010 and 2011 period. This will re-test it's all time high of 19913 points eventually with a short term resistance at 17627 points. At present it is above the support at 16000 as it closed at 16610 points on Friday the 29th ultimo.