Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week shed 20.13 points to close at 1,220.98 points as investors dumped shares to purchase primary shares issued by listed companies.

Despite a fall in the market index, the daily turnover rose to Rs242.35 million from Rs203.85 million in the previous week.

The secondary market that opened at 1,241.11 points on Sunday slipped 13.62 points to close at 1,227.49 points. On Monday too, Nepse posted a double digit points loss of 10.56 in its index and closed at 1,216.93 points.

However, on Tuesday, the market gained 7.43 points before sliding by 2.9 points and 0.48 points on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Consequently, the market closed with a downfall of 1.62 percent in overall trading days during the review period.

Stockbrokers said that the fall in Nepse was due to investors’ rushing to sell their stocks to raise money for purchasing the primary shares issued by Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower.

“This comes at a time when investors are cautious about investing in the market due to possible rise in interest rate by banks due to a shortfall in loanable funds,” said a stockbroker under condition of anonymity.The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also declined by 4.34 points to close at 259.67 points with a majority of the sub-indices shedding points.With a fall in the market index, the average value of the shares listed on the stock market also declined Rs23.98 million, as the market capitalisation fell to Rs1,456.62 billion from Rs1,480.60 billion.

Except for manufacturing and trading groups, the remaining groups landed in the red last week. Non-life insurance lost the largest of 94.53 points to close at 5,611.66 points. It was followed by hotel (51.84 points), hydropower (42.22 points), microfinance (30.68 points) and commercial banks of 21.99 points. Similarly, life insurance’s index fell 16.82 points, development banks fell by 14.16 points, finance companies dropped 11.01 points and ‘others’ lost 2.93 points.

The only gainer during the review period was manufacturing, which added 15.23 points to its index. Trading group was stable at 232.16 points throughout the week.

Of the individual companies, Prabhu Bank Limited led in terms of both the transaction amount and the number of traded shares. A total of 295,000 units of the bank’s shares worth Rs72.4 million were transacted last week.

Similarly, NIC Asia Bank with holding transaction of its shares worth Rs65.72 million stood in second position. Life Insurance Company Nepal, Janata Bank Nepal and Global IME Bank complete the top five list.

Last week, stocks worth Rs1.21 billion were transacted, which was 19.8 percent more than the transaction amount in the previous week. The total number of traded shares also increased to 4,577,236 units from 4,113,520 units.