Money

Investors upbeat despite Nepse fall

Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index slid by a marginal 0.15 points to close 1,220.29 points as investors remained upbeat following speculation that the government could address stock market issues through a white paper on the current economic situation of Nepal. Investors upbeat despite Nepse fall

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Published at : April 1, 2018

Updated at : April 1, 2018 14:11

Kathmandu

For more than two months, Nepse has been on a downward spiral, highlighting a bearish trend in the secondary market. However, the market correction seen last week has given some respite to investors.

Last week, the secondary market remained closed on Sunday to mark the public holiday of Ram Nawami, a Hindu festival that marks the birthday of Lord Vishnu. The market that opened at 1,220.44 points on Monday shed 51.89 points to close at 1,168.55 points.

With the selling spree inflicted by multiple reasons, the market took a heavy beating and Nepse halted trading for 15 minutes on the first trading hour on Monday.

On Tuesday, the market however gained 39.16 points to close at 1,207.71 points. As per stockbrokers, the market rebounded on the belief that the government would soon come up with an ‘economic white paper’ that could address the issues of the country’s only stock exchange.

Similarly, Nepse lost 2.9 points on Wednesday before adding up 15.48 points on Thursday. On average, the Nepse index declined 0.012 percent over the week.

“The market saw wild fluctuations due to a number of reasons such as low demand

and the excessive supply of stocks from launch of initial and further public offerings, and issuance of rights and bonus shares and the government releasing the economic white paper on the country’s macroeconomic situations,” said a stockbroker under condition of anonymity.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies added up 0.47 points to close at 260.88 points with a rise in index of commercial banks and development banks, the transaction of which dominates the secondary market.

The average value of the shares listed in stock market went up Rs470 million with the market capitalisation reaching to Rs1,430.19 billion from Rs1,429.72 billion over the week.

Of the ten trading groups, four posted gain. Hotels added the largest of 34.03 points to its index to close at 1,786.27 points. Development banks gained 12.04 points followed by commercial banks of 9.94 points and hydropower of 12.73 points among the gainers.

Six trading groups observed downfall in their indices. Insurance lost the largest of 115.12 points to close at 5,569.35 points. Similarly, manufacturing was down by 21.24 points, microfinance by 19.12 points, ‘others’ by 15.22 points, trading by 10.73 points and finance companies shed 2.44 points.

Of the individual companies, Nepal Life Insurance led in terms of the share transaction amount. The company witnessed a total transaction of Rs194.41 million.

Likewise, Nabil Bank saw second largest share transaction of Rs80.12 million, followed by Nepal Bank Limited, Nepal Investment Bank and Everest Bank.

Nepal Bank Limited led in terms of the traded number of shares. A total of 256,000 units of the bank’s shares were traded over the review period.

Last week, the stocks of 180 listed companies were traded. Despite a fall in the market index, the transaction amount rose 9.85 percent to Rs1.88 billion. According to Nepse, the traded number of shares also increased to 5,895,030 units from 4,602,630 units.

Right Shares/Bonus Shares

Company Type Units

NMB Microfinance Bittiya Sanstha Bonus 281,750

Everest Insurance Company Bonus 202,500

Machhapuchchhre Bank Bonus 6,651,490

Standard Chartered Bank Bonus 40,057,153.33