Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) bounced back after a bleak few weeks, gaining 30.1 points to close at 1,250.39 points last week, as the government promised to adopt policy reform in the stock market.
Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) bounced back after a bleak few weeks, gaining 30.1 points to close at 1,250.39 points last week, as the government promised to adopt policy reform in the stock market. For over two months, Nepse had been undergoing a bearish trend. However, the market picked up points based on the possibility of loanable funds being readily available once again and government’s assurance in adopting policy reforms with regards to the stock market.
Last week, the market that opened at 1,220.29 points on Sunday plunged 24.05 points to close at 1,196.24 points, the fallout from the economic white paper that the government published the previous week. On Monday, the market was down 3.28 points and closed at 1,192.96 points.
The market went on an upward trajectory during the remaining trading days, adding 6.04 points, 27.45 points and 23.94 points on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday respectively.
On an average, the Nepse index increased 2.46 percent over the week. Stockbrokers considered the gain as market correction. “As the prices of shares had plunged heavily over the past few weeks, investors were buoyed by the remark of Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada for taking corrective policy reform measures during their meeting with the Finance Minister” said a stockbroker under condition of anonymity.
“In addition, Nepal Rastra Bank’s announcement to inject additional money in the market to ease the shortage of loanable fund has also fuelled up the investors’ expectation.”
The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also inclined 6.01 points to close at 266.89 points with all the trading groups posting growth.
With a rise in the market index, the average value of the shares listed on the stock market also went up Rs35.29 billion with market capitalisation reaching Rs1,465.48 billion from Rs1,430.19 billion over the week.
The entire trading groups witnessed growth in their indices. Insurance gained the largest of 236.22 points to close at 5,805.57 points. Manufacturing’s index added up 88.55 points, followed by microfinance of 69.15 points, development banks of 42.28 points and hydropower of 42.06 points.
Likewise, index of hotels was up with 29.64 points, ‘others’ with 18.27 points, commercial banks with 17.72 points, finance companies with 6.69 points and trading with 2.7 points.
Of the individual companies, Nabil Bank led in terms of the transaction amount. The bank witnessed a total transaction of its shares worth Rs76.73 million. Likewise, second place Standard Chartered Bank observed Rs68.6 million worth of transactions followed by Nepal Insurance Company, Nepal Life Insurance Company and Nepal Investment Bank.
Janata Bank Nepal led in terms of the traded number of shares. A total of 150,000 units of the bank’s shares were traded over the review period. Last week, the stocks of 181 listed companies were traded. Despite a rise in the market index, the transaction amount fell 10.17 percent to Rs1.69 billion. According to Nepse, the traded number of shares also declined to 5,450,260 units from 5,895,030 units.
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