Nepal Stock Exchange slid marginally by 5.35 points to close at 1,191.07 points last week even though investors flocked to the market to purchase shares which have seen a significant fall in prices.

The country’s only secondary market has chalked out losses for five straight weeks.

Despite the downswing in the market, the average daily turnover, however, inclined to Rs394.20 million last week from Rs324.97 million in the previous week.

The market that opened at Rs1,196.42 points on Sunday fell 11.63 points to close at Rs1,184.79 points. On Monday, the secondary market shed 14.45 points followed by a gain of 20.57 points and 3.86 points on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.

The uptick came after the CDS and Clearing issued a notice that it had launched a new software allowing the investors to calculate and submit their capital gains online. Previously, investors had to visit the stockbrokers’ offices to file their application.

But the market could not maintain the positive momentum on Thursday and shed 3.7 points. Overall, the market was down by 0.45 percent during the review period.

Stockbrokers said the stock market corrected itself slightly after investors sought to pick up shares at bargain prices. “Many investors injected money to recover their losses after seeing their portfolio shrink dramatically in the previous weeks,” said a stockbroker under the condition of anonymity.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chips companies also went down 1.35 points to close at 259.90 points, with a downfall in the majority of trading groups.

Last week, investors lost Rs6.79 billion in the book value of their investment portfolio, after the market capitalisation declined to Rs1,512.67 billion from Rs1,519.46 billion.

Eight out of the 11 trading groups observed a downswing in their indices. Life Insurance with a drop of 103.35 points posted the biggest loss, closing at 5,388.44 points.

Index of hotels, manufacturing, hydropower and ‘others’ went down by double digits. Microfinance, finance companies and non-life insurance saw their indices drop by marginal values.

Commercial banks and development banks were among the gainers, picking up 5.17 points and 2.33 points respectively. There was no transaction of shares under the ‘trading’ group during the review period.

Regarding individual companies, Machhapuchchhre Bank recorded the largest transaction worth Rs110.20 million. In this segment, Nepal Life Insurance Company finished as runner up, followed by Nepal Bank Limited, Kumari Bank Limited and Shivam Cements.

Last week, stocks worth Rs1.97 billion were traded which was 21.6 percent more than the amount registered in the previous week. The total number of traded shares also inclined to 7,049,320 units from 6,024,980 units.

During the review period, Nepal Stock Exchange listed 2,501,775 units of debentures and primary shares of three companies.

Companies Types of shares Units

Nepal Bangladesh Bank Limited Debenture 2085 2,000,000

Ghodigoda Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha IPO 276,250

Radhi Bidyut Company Bonus 225,525