Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index dropped 24.58 points to close at 1,406.52 points last week.

The market opened at 1,431.1 points on Sunday and added 17.39 points to close at 1,413.71 points on Tuesday. The index dropped 7.19 points to close at 1,406.52 on Wednesday. The market was closed on Monday and Thursday to mark the public holidays—Makar Sankranti and Sonam Lhosar—respectively.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also went down 5.34 points to close at 296.86 points.

All ten trading groups observed a downward movement in their indices last week.

Hydropower was the biggest loser, dropping 115.25 points to close at 1,861.23 points. Insurance lost 89.4 points in its index and was the second largest loser. It closed at 7,270.44 points last week.

Development banks went down by 23.18 points to close at 1,570.85 points. Similarly, the ‘others’ group lost 19.9 points to settle at 766.83 points last week.

The remaining losers consisted of commercial banks (19.47 points), microfinance (13.69 points), hotels (13. 08 points), finance companies (6.86 points), manufacturing (5.75 points) and trading (2.87 points).

With a fall in the market index, the average value of the shares listed on the stock market also dropped, as investors lost Rs38.89 billion, as the market capitalisation reached to Rs1,643.16  from Rs1,682 .05 billion over the week.

Of the individual companies, Sanima Mai Hydropower Company led in terms of both transaction amount and the number of shares. The company witnessed turnover of Rs190.08 million out of 447,000 units of shares.  Likewise, Nabil Bank Limited with observed transactions worth Rs53.99 million to finish in second position. It was followed by Nepal Life Insurance Company, Standard Chartered Bank and National Life Insurance Company.

Last week, stocks of 170 listed companies were traded.

Along with a drop in market index, the transaction amount also dropped by 35.98 percent to Rs1.09 billion. The traded number of shares dropped to 2,461,600 units from 4,105,210 units.