Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week shed 17.51 points to close at 1,205.02 points after the newly introduced full-fledged online system experienced software glitches, hampering investors’ confidence.

The bourse had launched the Nepse Online Trading System (NOTS) on November to facilitate stocks trading by investors themselves but the system was plagued by problems which affected trading for most of the review period.

This resulted in the average daily transaction falling from Rs200 million to Rs165 million last week.

The secondary market that opened at 1,222.53 points on Sunday slipped 16.74 points to close at 1,205.79 points. On Monday too, the Nepse posted a loss of 12.45 in its index and closed at 1,193.34 points. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, following an improvement in the NOTS display, the market gained 14.23 points and 1.32 points respectively. On Thursday, the market landed in the red again with a downfall of 3.87 points. Consequently, the market closed 1.43 percent lower in overall trading during the review period.

Stockbrokers said that the fall in Nepse was due to investors’ lack of faith in NOTS. 

“The glitch in the new system comes at the worst possible time as investors were already reluctant to invest in the country’s only secondary market during the festive season,” said a stockbroker under condition of anonymity.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also declined 3.81 points to close at 256.28 points with a downswing in the sub-indices of almost all of the trading groups including commercial banks which holds a major share in market capitalisation.

Last week, the market capitalisation stood at Rs1,437.74 billion. 

Except for the groups belonging to finance companies, manufacturing and trading, the remaining eight landed in the red.

Hydropower was the biggest loser, dropping 55.02 points to close at 1,266.15 points. Life insurance with a downfall of 47.3 points was in second in the losers’ lists. Non-life insurance lost 43.54 points, microfinance lost 26.05 points, hotels lost 20.79 points, commercial banks lost 20.71 points, ‘others’ lost 8.68 points and development banks lost 0.54 points.   

Finance companies were the only gainer during the review period. The group added up 100.38 points in its index and closed at 605.62 points. 

There was a total transaction worth Rs825.23 million during the review period.