The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week gained 12.11 points to close at 1,267.18 points. Along with the rise in Nepse, the average daily transaction amount also surged to Rs827.03 million from Rs656.25 million in the previous week.     

Nepse opened at 1,255.07 points, increased by 2.61 points and closed at 1,257.68 points on Sunday. On Monday, the market remained closed to mark Indra Jatra. On Tuesday, the market added 22.37 points before taking a downturn of 2.31 points and 10.56 points on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. On Tuesday, the country’s only secondary market conducted a turnover of Rs1.12 billion, the largest single-day transaction in five months. Consequently, the market closed with a gain of marginal 0.96 percent in overall trading days during the review period.

Stockbrokers attributed the rise in Nepse to banks’ relaxing the policy of offering loans against shares to their customs.

“At present, banks have adequate loan-able fund with them, which enables them to offer loans against shares at as low as 11 percent per annum, down from 14-15 percent per year previously,” said a stockbroker under the condition of maintaining anonymity.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also went up 3.14 points to close at 269.23 points with an increase in the stocks’ value of a majority of trading groups along with a double digit rise in commercial banks’ sub index.  

Along with a rise in the market index, the average value of the shares listed in stock market also rose by Rs14.42 billion, as market capitalisation surged to Rs1,509.32 billion from Rs1,494.90 billion.

Of 11 trading groups, seven saw gains in their indices. Hotels gained the largest, with 33.29 points to close at 1,920.7 points. Development banks gained 28.7 points, commercial banks gained 23.1 points, manufacturing gained 17.33 points and life insurance gained 15.3 points. Likewise, the index of trading and finance companies grew by 12.5 points and 3.79 points respectively.

Of the four losers, non-life insurance led the segment. The sub-index of the group was down 89.27 points. It was followed by ‘others’ (12.82 points), hydropower (10.89 points) and microfinance (8.87 points).

Of the individual companies, Prabhu Bank Limited led in terms of the transaction amount. The bank witnessed the transaction of its shares worth Rs233.61 million. Similarly, NIC Asia Bank, with shares worth Rs178.34 million, was in the second position of the category. NMB Bank, Nepal Bank Limited and Kumari Bank Limited were among others in the lists.

Likewise, the promoters’ shares of Capital Merchant Bank and Finance Company led in terms of the number of traded shares. A total of 3,085,000 units of the company’s promotors shares were traded last week.

Last week, stocks of 189 listed companies were traded. Along with a rise in market index, the transaction amount also escalated by 26.02 percent to Rs3.30 billion. The traded number of shares inclined up to 16,772,240 units from 9,070,770 units during the review period. 

Right Shares/Bonus Shares

Company    Type    Units

Dev Bikas Bank    Bonus    2,470,923.41