The market’s average daily turnover, however, rose to Rs378.55 million last week from Rs359.67 million the previous week.

The market, which had opened at 1,157.89 points on Sunday, fell 17.87 points to close at 1,140.02 points. On Monday too, the index plunged 16.18 points.

However, on Tuesday as well as Wednesday, the market index gained 26.9 points and 22.69 points, respectively, after Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada fund raisers such as Employee Provident Fund and Citizen Investment Trust to invest on the stock exchange.

But the market growth could not sustain on Thursday. The index fell 18.13 points. As a result, the market shed 0.22 percent in stock prices in overall transactions.

Stockbrokers said the investors are unnerved due to a continuous fall in the market in the last two months. “Due to this reason, the market is in a slump despite a number of listed companies announcing good dividends,” said a stockbroker on the condition of anonymity.

Niraj Giri, a spokesperson for the Securities Board of Nepal, said the share prices fluctuated widely as there are few institutional investors and a large number of small investors. “Small investors do not consider the fundamentals of the market before buying or selling shares, and they panic easily at the slightest change in government policy or the government announcements,” said Giri.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chips companies also went down 1.59 points to close at 252.21 points, week on week. Though a majority of the trading groups added marginal value to their indices, the sensitive index fell on the back of declining share prices of commercial banks which account for a major share of the market capitalisation.

Last week, investors lost a Rs3.13 billion in the book value of their investment portfolio, after the market capitalisation declined to Rs1,467.45 billion from Rs1,470.58 billion.

During the review period, out of 11 trading groups, four witnessed a downswing in their indices. Life insurance lost the largest of 28.45 points to close at 5,118.40 points. Non-life insurance, commercial banks and ‘others’ were among the losers.

Of the seven gainers, manufacturing posted 78.48 points, the largest in the segment. Hotels, microfinance and trading, meanwhile, declined by double-digit points. Indices of hydropower, finance companies and development banks fell marginally.

In the last week, the value of total stocks traded was Rs1.89 billion, five percent higher than the transaction amount registered in the previous week. The number of traded shares, however, declined to 6,587,020 units from 6,655,170 units.

Nepal Stock Exchange listed 9,111,349.4 units of primary shares during the review period.