Stockmarket lacks vibrancy, says Muhith

The Dhaka Stock Exchange launched a mobile application yesterday that will enable investors to trade from their mobile handsets.

The app is expected to bring back vibrancy in the stockmarket, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said at the launching ceremony.

“There is a missing element of vibrancy that is needed for stability in the market. I expect that the market will become vibrant with the introduction of the app,” Muhith said.

The stockmarket is yet to become stable since the price debacle five years back, he said at the event at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka.

The app, DSE-Mobile, will ease access to information and trading opportunities for investors, Muhith said.

The minister said he entered the stockmarket as an investor in 1969. “But I lost Tk 33,000 for political reasons at that time,” he said. “Interest in the capital market grew again in 1980s, but it came to an end after the 1996 market crash,” he said.

The stockmarket witnessed another crash in 2010-11.

“Although I have no investment now, I have relations with the stockmarket as the finance minister,” he said.

Since 2010-11, the regulatory regime has been developed such that the Bangladesh stockmarket can be compared with other developed markets, Muhith said.

“But the market is yet to be vibrant.”

With the launch of the mobile application, investors now can trade shares without physically being present at a brokerage house and without the involvement of authorised traders.

In addition to buying and selling shares, the app will provide some featured information, including buy or sell alerts, notifications and portfolio status to the investors, which are not easily available on the website or via brokers' services.

An investor, however, will first need to register with the concerned broker and then install the app from the Google Play Store. The app can initially be operated on android devices but will later be upgraded for iOS and other platforms.

The application was developed by FlexTrade Systems, a global leader in broker-neutral trading platforms.

The DSE introduced the mobile app in line with its trading system upgradation process. The DSE upgraded the entire trading system, replacing its 16-year-old technology, in two segments at a total cost of around Tk 35 crore.

Nasdaq OMX, a leading provider of trading and exchange technology, supplied the matching engine, while FlexTrade Systems provided the order management system at the brokers' end.

Earlier in November, the DSE introduced a mobile app styled 'DSE Info' to disseminate market data to investors and other members of the financial community.

The app's features include market and trading statistics in real time, company information, portfolio information and company news. The ICT division and the DSE developed the app jointly.

M Khairul Hossain, chairman of Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission, said there is a lack of financial literacy among investors. “We are taking initiatives to increase financial literacy among the investors, and we recently formed two separate committees on the issue.”

DSE Managing Director Swapan Kumar Bala and Director Waliul Islam also spoke.