Sri Lankan stocks surpass historic milestone

COLOMBO, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's All Share Price Index (ASPI) of the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) surpassed the 16,500 mark for the first time in history on Tuesday, official data shows.

Meanwhile, the S&P SL20 also made history by crossing 5,000 points for the first time.

These developments are the latest in a series of milestones surpassed by Sri Lankan stock indices in the past few months.

By the end of trading on Tuesday, the ASPI increased by 224.01 points to 16,597.16. The S&P SL20 finished at 5,056.74, up by 94.71 points, according to the data.

The day has witnessed a turnover of over 8.31 billion rupees (about 28 million U.S. dollars) with more than 241 million shares traded.

The ASPI measures the movements of the overall market, while the S&P SL20 follows the performance of 20 leading publicly traded companies listed on the CSE.