The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) rose marginally by 2.38 points to close at 1,090.68 points last week. Although the market was on the downward trend since the country faced blockade from India, the market made a slight recovery last week.

Nawaraj Subedi, managing director of Trishul Securities and Investment, said that the book closure by a number of companies helped the

recovery to some extent. “The market rose slightly on investor expectations that the companies would offer dividend,” he said.

 The secondary market that opened at 1,088.3 points showed fluctuating trend throughout the weekdays. The benchmark rose in every alternative trading day, with the stock market gaining 3.53 points on Monday and losing 5.96 points on Tuesday. Nepse again made up 6.43 points on Wednesday before falling 1.62 points on Thursday.

Of the nine trading groups, indices of five witnessed upward trend. The hydropower was the biggest gainer at 40.07 points on the benchmark index, followed by manufacturing, ‘others’, insurance and development banks.

Indices of three groups—hotels, commercial banks and finance companies—fell last week. Hotels suffered the biggest fall at five points. The index of ‘trading’ group remained stable at 207.97 points throughout the weekdays.

Similarly, the sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chips companies made a slight gain of 0.56 points to close at 235.78 points.

Along with Nepse, the transaction volume increased by 15.12 percent to Rs925.9 million. The number of traded shares also increased to 1,838,440 units from 1,327,280.

Among individual companies, Nepal Bangladesh Bank led both in terms of the transaction volume and number of shares. The bank recorded a transaction worth Rs87.5 million through the trading of 147,000 units of its shares.

Everest Bank, Nabil Bank (promoters’ shares), Chilime Hydropower and Sanima Bank completed the top five companies in terms of transaction amount.

Top five companies in terms of turnover

Company    Turnover (in Rs millions)

Nepal Bangladesh Bank    87.54

Everest Bank     70.04

Nabil Bank (promoters’ shares)    56.64

Chilime Hydropower    39.3

Sanima Bank    38.58

Sectors that went up

Sector    Points Gained

Hydropower Companies    40.07

Manufacturing    26.98

Others    17.62

Insurance Companies    6.35

Development Banks    1.72

Sectors that went down

Sector    Points Gained

Hotels    5

Commercial Banks    2.67

Finance Companies    1.94