Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week jumped 22.98 points to close at 1,190.16 points on Thursday.

The market that opened at 1,167.18 points on Sunday posted gains throughout the week, with the week’s largest gain coming on Thursday, when the benchmark index rose 9.18 points.

Stockbrokers attributed the growth to the rise in investor confidence due to multiple reasons including a possible political consensus over Madhesi

issues and the regulator making the demat shares transaction mandatory from Friday.

Niraj Maharjan, managing director of Midas Stock Broking Company, said the regulator’s decision to start transactions of paperless share certificates for all the listed companies prompted investors to rush to dematerialise their stocks. “This resulted in a short supply of stocks, boosting the prices,” said Maharjan, adding this also helped boost investor confidence.

Jivan Kumar Prasai, managing director of Sumeru Securities, also echoed Maharjan. He added that investors who had got back their money after allotment of shares of the Hydropower Investment Development Company Limited rushed to purchase shares, boosting the demand.

Except for Manufacturing (down 25.84 points) and Others (down 5.61 points), all other groups posted gains. The Hydropower group (up 134.14 points) was the week’s biggest gainer, followed by Insurance Companies, Development Banks, Commercial Banks, Finance Companies, Hotels and Trading.  

The sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chip companies was up 5.05 points to at 255.83 points.

Despite the rise in the Nepse index, the overall market transaction volume fell 3.82 percent to Rs2.45 billion. The number of traded shares, however, rose to 5,112,120 units from 4,053,380.

Sanima Bank posted the highest individual transaction of Rs117.08 million. It was followed by Kumari Bank, Laxmi Bank, Nepal SBI Bank and National Life Insurance. Kumari Bank (promoter’s shares) led in terms of the highest number of shares traded (427,000 units).