Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) slipped 17.44 points to close at 1,653.18 points last week, with the investors’ sentiment being affected by the political situation in the aftermath of an impeachment motion against Chief Justice Sushila Karki. 

The secondary market that opened at 1,670.62 points on Sunday dropped 19.84 points to close at 1,650.78 points. During the four-day trading, with a public holiday on Monday, the market added 7.55 points on Tuesday to close at 1,658.33 points. 

Similarly, the market gained 4.05 points on Wednesday before going down 9.2 points on Thursday. The capital market declined 1.04 percent in overall trading during last week.  

“The market was mainly affected by the political situation resulted from the impeachment motion against Chief Justice Karki in relation to appointment of chief of Nepal Police,” said Ram Chandra Bhattarai, managing director of Aryatara Investment and Securities. “A number of investors appeared reluctant to buy additional stocks fearing democrats’ 

possible loss in local elections following the move to impeach the chief justice.”  

Along with the Nepse index, the sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also dipped 3.66 points to close at 353.55 points. With the decline in commercial banks’ index by 15.78 points, along with a downfall in majority of sub-indices, the sensitive index plunged last week. 

With the rise in Nepse index, the average value of the shares listed in the stock market also declined by Rs19.72 billion, with the market capitalisation plunging to Rs1,917.18 billion from Rs1,936.9 billion over the week. 

Except manufacturing and “others”, indices of the rest of nine trading groups took down swing last week. Insurance sub-index witnessed the largest fall of 166.04 points to close at 8,884.82 points. “With the insurance index lying at larger range, a small fall in shares price makes the sub-index witnessed bigger fall,” Bhattarai said.   

The Nepse of hotels was the second in the list with its index dipping by 52.2 points to close at 2,191.72 points. Development bank lost 16.32 points to close at 1,962.66 points. Similarly, hydropower index went down 16.15 points, commercial bank 15.78 points and finance companies lost 14.85 points. 

Manufacturing index soared 22.66 points to close at 2,190.03 points while “others” added up 2.6 points in its index. Trading index was stable at 211.35 points throughout the weekdays. 

Last week, Nepal Life Insurance observed the largest turnover amount of Rs168.01 million. According to Bhattarai, investors were attracted to purchase stocks of the company following the listing of the company’s primary shares issued through further public offerings in the secondary market last week. 

Similarly, Nepal SBI Bank’s stocks worth Rs124.71 million were transacted. Prabhu Bank, Sanima Mai Hydropower and Prime Life were also among the top five companies in largest turnover. 

Prabhu Bank with holding transaction of 256,000 shares led in terms of number of traded shares. 

Last week, the shares of 154 listed companies were traded. Along with Nepse, the transaction amount also dropped 40.26 percent to Rs3.40 billion. The traded number of shares also declined to 5,384,790 from 8,204,350 units.  

Right Shares/Bonus Shares

Company    Type    Units

Everest Bank    Bonus    8,638,228.41

Kakre Bihar Bikas Bank    Bonus    115,695.75

Janata Bank    Bonus    2,472,000

Kisan Microfinance Bittiya Sanstha    Bonus    122,000

United Finance    Bonus    3,152.44

Janata Bank    Right    10,278,274

Saptakoshi Development Bank    Right    1,000,000