The main index of the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) surpassed 10,000 points after 10 months yesterday (4) while banking shares gained over 10% as the markets opened after a long holiday.

Accordingly, the main index rose by 633.39 points (6.71%) to 10,076.64 while the S&P SL20 rose by 279.17 points (10.29%) to 2,992.82. The market recorded a turnover of Rs. 7.4 billion with 335 million shares trading within the day.

During the first three minutes after the market opened for the day, the main index jumped up by 421.94 points and recorded an intraday high of 10,120 before settling at 10,076.

Banks, primary dealers and insurance shares gained during the day as the Domestic Debt Optimisation (DDO) plan by the Government decided to exclude them.

Commercial Bank PLC, the largest listed commercial bank which has invested 23% of its assets in Treasury Bonds saw a share price gain of 18.80% with the highest turnover for the day of Rs. 959 million.

Meanwhile, the share price of Sampath Bank PLC, which is the second-largest listed commercial bank with 16% of its assets invested in Treasury Bonds, gained by 14.49% with the highest trade volume of 2,728 for the day.

Speaking to The Daily Morning Business, Softlogic Stockbrokers PLC Co-Head of Research Raynal Wickremeratne said that the market was expecting bad news in the form of domestic debt restructuring coming in for the banks, and added that the fact that there was no impact on the banks was extremely good news for the market.

Moreover, he said that when the institutional investors or people started rebasing the value of some of the companies at the CSE, retail investors who noticed that the market was running got excited and participated in the run.

“The banks that were expecting the highest impact from the domestic debt restructuring were the ones that were perceived to be undervalued and those were the ones that actually moved up the most,” he said.

Primary dealers such as Capital Alliance PLC gained by 24.85% and First Capital Treasuries PLC  by 24.81%.