Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index shed 24.24 points, or 1.6 percent, last week to close at 1530.31 points on Thursday, the last trading day of the week, as demand for shares of banks, hydropower companies and insurers fell.

The stock index opened at 1554.55 points on Sunday, the first trading day of the week, and lost a whopping 34.89 points to close at 1519.66 points. On Monday, the index recovered some of the losses of the previous day and closed higher at 1523.26 points.

On Tuesday, the index again took a big dip of 21.06 points to close at 1502.2 points. The downward spiral continued on Wednesday as well with Nepse index slipping another 9 points to close at 1493.2 points. On Thursday, the market made a remarkable recovery and added 37.11 points to the index to end the week at 1530.31 points.

Along with the fall in Nepse index, sensitive index, which tracks trading of Group ‘A’ companies, also slipped 5.28 points last week to end at 320.73 points.

Last week’s stock market fall reduced the value of all the shares listed on Nepse by Rs28.8 billion to Rs1,775.1 billion.

“The index had been falling for eight days due to weak demand for shares. But prices corrected on Thursday, which is a good sign,” Stockbroker Narendra Sijapati said. “We hope prices won’t drop drastically in the coming days.”

The index is likely to remain around this level for few weeks, as the Dashain, the biggest festival of Hindus, is officially beginning on Thursday. The festival lasts for 15 days. But after this festival is over, Nepalis will start preparing for another festival, Tihar. 

During the entire festive season of around a month, many stock investors go on a vacation or spend time with family. “The stock market tends to lose vibrancy during this period,” said Sijapati.

A look at the trading data of last week show that the insurance sector was the biggest loser, with the sub-index shedding 202.18 points to close at 8515.83 points. Another big loser was the manufacturing sector which lost 54.22 points to end the week at 2592.32 points. The third biggest loser of last week was development banking sector, 

which shed 53.29 points to close at 1917.43 points.

Other sectors that felt selling pressure last week were hydropower and banking sectors, which lost 42.88 points and 19.91 points, respectively.

Last week, shares of 177 listed companies were traded on the bourse, generating turnover of Rs 3.6 billion, up 55.8 percent than in the previous week.