The All Share Price Index closed down 209.38 points, or 1.05%, at 19,717.92 on Thursday — a fourth consecutive losing session and the steepest of the run — on turnover of Rs 1.10 billion.

The more liquid S&P SL20 fell 38.43 points, or 0.68%, to 5,618.48, EconomyNext reported at 4.15 p.m. Hiru News carried the ASPI figures in Sinhala with the same turnover.

The minister’s assessment came first

About five hours before the close, Deputy Minister Anil Jayantha told Parliament that the Colombo Stock Exchange “is not volatile though there are frequent fluctuations due to interest rate changes and the war situation in the Middle East,” the Daily Mirror reported at 11.23 a.m.

“We expect the Stock Exchange to recover and become stable soon,” he said.

The sequence matters. His remarks were filed in the morning and the index fell through the afternoon; he was not responding to Thursday’s close, and nothing in the reporting suggests he was asked about it.

Both indices reconcile — and a two-session fault has closed

Thursday’s figures imply a previous close of 19,927.30 on the ASPI and 5,656.91 on the S&P SL20. Both match this desk’s recorded Wednesday closes exactly.

That is worth stating, because the SL20 did not reconcile on either of the two preceding sessions. This desk recorded an implied base running 6.93 points below EconomyNext’s published close on 19 October and 8.72 points below it on 20 October, a gap that was widening while the ASPI reconciled to the point throughout.

On Thursday’s numbers the gap is zero. The fault did not carry into a third week of sessions, and the percentage changes check out against both bases — 209.38 on 19,927.30 is 1.05%, and 38.43 on 5,656.91 is 0.68%.

Hiru also reported turnover correctly as Rs 1.1 billion. Its Wednesday filing had given the figure in millions, understating the day’s trading by a factor of a thousand.

Where the moves were

Turnover was led by banking at Rs 249.91 million, followed by capital goods at Rs 240.14 million. Crossings — negotiated block trades — accounted for Rs 155.78 million, or about 14% of the day’s total.

The largest declines were in consumer names: Singer Sri Lanka (−3.67% to Rs 68.20) and Distilleries Company of Sri Lanka (−3.60% to Rs 50.90). Hatton National Bank fell 1.20% to Rs 369.75, Dialog Axiata 0.93% to Rs 42.40 and Commercial Bank of Ceylon 0.38% to Rs 196.25.

Gains were narrower and came from smaller counters — The Kandy Hotels Company (+7.77% to Rs 11.10), Resus Energy (+5.06% to Rs 8.30) and Asia Asset Finance (+3.89% to Rs 42.70). Ceylon Tobacco Company added 0.67% to Rs 1,795.50.

Update: a fourth filing supplies the breadth and foreign-flow figures

A Daily Mirror market report filed at 6.04 p.m. closes two of the gaps recorded below, and both cut against the deputy minister’s reading.

Market breadth was heavily negative. There were 40 gainers against 162 decliners, an advance-decline ratio of 0.25. Roughly four stocks fell for every one that rose, which establishes that the 209-point drop was broad-based rather than the work of a few heavy counters.

Foreign investors were net buyers, not sellers. The session recorded a net inflow of about Rs 39.22 million, with foreign purchases exceeding sales. The selling that drove the index down was therefore domestic.

Two further details fill out the session. The ASPI fell below 19,900 during the morning and below 19,800 during the afternoon, closing at the day’s low of 19,717.92 — a steady decline rather than a single shock, and no late recovery. And the day’s turnover of Rs 1.10 billion is set against a year-to-date daily average of Rs 3.49 billion, so trading ran at under a third of the year’s normal pace.

John Keells Holdings recorded the highest individual counter turnover at Rs 157.39 million. The Daily Mirror ranks Distilleries as the largest negative contributor to the index, followed by Hatton National Bank, Dialog Axiata, Singer Sri Lanka and Carson Cumberbatch — consistent with the price moves recorded above. SMB Finance gave the strongest positive contribution, ahead of C T Holdings and Ceylon Tobacco.

One small discrepancy: the Daily Mirror puts the S&P SL20’s fall at 38.44 points, where EconomyNext gives 38.43. The difference is a rounding artefact either side of the same close of 5,618.48 and does not affect the index level.

Still not reported

No filing offers an analyst’s reading of the fall, connects the decline to the Middle East conditions the deputy minister cited, or tests his claim that the market is not volatile against what is now a four-session run.