Money
Nepse sees marginal gain of 3.19pts
The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) climbed up by a margin of 3.19 points to close at 1,181.69 points last week. This rise in stocks came after the government assured stakeholders in a meeting last week that it would address and resolve the issues related with the stock exchange market, including the ones related with capital gains tax.The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) climbed up by a margin of 3.19 points to close at 1,181.69 points last week. This rise in stocks came after the government assured stakeholders in a meeting last week that it would address and resolve the issues related with the stock exchange market, including the ones related with capital gains tax.
Despite the slight rise in Nepse, the average daily transaction amount declined to Rs200.74 million from Rs235.50 million in the previous week.
Nepse, which opened at 1,178.5 points, dropped 2.78 points to close at 1,175.72 points on Sunday. When the market re-opened on Tuesday, after a break on Monday (which was a public holiday), the market gained 1.37 points.
The market then lost 4.79 points on Wednesday, before adding 9.39 points on Thursday. Consequently, the market closed with a 0.27 percent gain in overall trading days during the review period.
Stockbrokers attributed the marginal gain in Nepse to the government’s assurance to solve the dilemma of capital gain tax in a meeting with investors last week. Of late, the market has been going through a bearish trend because of the government’s move to impose capital gains tax in Nepse transactions.
During the investors’ meeting, Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada expressed his commitment to solve the issue soon. “Similarly, Khatiwada also expressed his desire to introduce hedge funds to support the market, which largely helped boost the investors’ confidence,” said a stockbroker under the condition of anonymity.
The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also went up 0.8 points to close at 249.79 points with an increase in the stocks’ value of commercial banks in particular.
Along with a rise in the market index, the average value of the shares listed in the stock market also rose by Rs3.80 billion, as market capitalisation increased to Rs1,405.83 billion from Rs1,402.03 billion.
Last week, only three trading groups added points in their indices. The manufacturing sector gained the most (17.63 points) and closed at 2,157.6 points. Similarly, indices of hotels and commercial banks increased 7.63 points and 7.49 points respectively.
Among the losers, life insurance observed a downfall of 44.88 points to close at 5,521.15 points. Likewise, hydropower lost 7.74 points, microfinance lost 5.3 points, development banks lost 2.89 points, non life insurance lost 2.48 points, ‘others’ lost 1.73 points and finance companies lost 0.99 points. The index of the ‘trading’ group remained stable at 207.33 points throughout the week.
From the individual companies’ index, promoters’ shares of Nepal Investment Bank led in terms of transaction amount, with a transaction worth Rs73.96 million of the bank’s promoters’ shares during the review period.
Similarly, shares of Nepal Life Insurance Company, worth Rs44.58 million, were transacted as well. NMB Bank Limited, NIC Asia Bank and NLG Insurance Company were also among the top five companies in the segment. Likewise, NMB Bank, with turnover of 132,000 units of shares, led in terms of the number of shares traded.
Last week, the stocks of 180 listed companies were traded. Despite a rise in the market index, the transaction amount fell 31.81 percent to Rs803 million. The traded number of shares also declined to 2,542,710 units from 4,421,950 units.