Money
Nepse index posts loss of 1.13pts
Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index slid marginally by 1.13 points to close at 1,536.54 points last week, as investors took a cautious stance to see the results of the parliamentary and provincial polls that were held on Thursday.Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index slid marginally by 1.13 points to close at 1,536.54 points last week, as investors took a cautious stance to see the results of the parliamentary and provincial polls that were held on Thursday.
Over the review period, the secondary market was open for only three days, with public holidays on Sunday and Thursday. The market which opened at 1,537.67 points on Monday, dropped 10.9 points to close at 1,526.77 points. The index continued to fall on Tuesday, dropping 1.9 points to close at 1,524.87 points. During the last trading day of the week, the market index however added up 11.67 points. As a result, the Nepse index dropped marginally by 0.073 percent over the week.
Stockbrokers attributed the fall in Nepse index to investors’ high expectations on the recently concluded elections. “The investors’ expectation over the democratic alliance to lead in the polls started to fade last week, resulting in the index falling,” said a stockbroker, under condition of anonymity. “The investors are in ‘wait and watch’ sentiment before investing further in the stock exchange market.”
The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also declined 0.59 points to close at 323.67 points with a fall in indices of commercial banks, insurance and two other groups.
With decline in the market index, the average value of shares listed on the stock market also went down Rs0.72 billion, with market capitalisation reaching to Rs1,785.48 billion from Rs1,786.20 billion over the week.
Of the ten trading groups, four witnessed downturn in their indices. Insurance shed the largest of 8.56 points to close at 8,128.65 points. It was followed by ‘others’ (8.39 points), trading (3.8 points) and commercial banks (2.83 points).
“With a number of investors shifting their investment to hydropower, Chilime Hydropower and Butwal Power Company in particular, there was a fall in the indices of these trading groups,” the source said.
Out of the six gainers, hotels added up the largest of 29.45 points in its index to close at 2,205.51 points. Similarly, hydropower gained 17.27 points to close at 2,096.03 points. It was followed by microfinance (11.13 points), manufacturing (8.57 points), development banks (6.37 points) and finance companies gained 2.85 points. Of the individual companies, Butwal Power Company led in terms of both the transaction amount and the number of shares. The company witnessed a total transaction of Rs151.45 million from turnover of its 205,000 shares. The stockbrokers attributed the largest turnover of Butwal Power to the company’s plan to issue ‘further public offerings’ soon.
Likewise, Shikhar Insurance which observed shares transaction worth Rs132.54 million was in second position, followed by the promoters’ shares of Prime Life Insurance, Nepal Doorsanchar Company and Nepal Life Insurance.
Last week, the stocks of 173 listed companies were traded. Along with fall in market index, the transaction amount also dipped 50.37 percent to Rs1.81 billion. According to Nepse, the traded number of shares also went down to 3,370,680 units from 6,818,910 units.