The secondary market that opened at 1,615.19 points on Sunday dropped 24.7 points to close at 1,590.49 points. On Monday, the market fell 9.97 points to close at 1,580.52 points. On Tuesday, the market however gained 4.63 points. The market slipped slightly by 0.66 points on Wednesday before gaining 5.1 points on Thursday. 

 

Satish Kumar Shrestha, managing director of Siprabi Securities, said the investors were mainly affected by the uncertainty of the government to defer the date of second phase election. Shrestha expressed his hope that the market would take upward trend next week. “As the fiscal year is approaching and most of the companies, financial institutions in particular, have posted good financial record in this year, the market is likely to move upward,” he said. 

 

With the double digit fall in the market index, the average value of the shares listed in stock market also dopped Rs29.82 billion, with market capitalisation valued at  Rs1859.87 billion.

 

Along with the Nepse index, the sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also declined 5.51 points to close at 337.61 points.

 

Most of the trading groups observed a downfall in their indices except for the hotel sub-index, which posted a gain. Insurance was the biggest loser, dropping 174.19 points to close at 8,377.71 points. “As many investors were attracted to purchase shares of banks with low market price, it could have affected the insurance sector adversely,” Shrestha opined.  

 

Hydropower lost 46.52 points to close at 1,996.04 points. Development bank and commercial bank lost 22.62 points and 22.55 points respectively. Shrestha said the panic selling by the short term investors had affected these financial sectors’ stocks. 

 

The index of manufacturing declined 22.03 points, ‘others’ 15.33 points and finance companies also observed a drop of 7.51 points. Hotels, added 10.29 points to its index and was the only gainer during the review period. The index of trading was stable at 212.76 points throughout the weekdays.  

 

Standard Chartered Bank Nepal observed the largest turnover of shares worth Rs237.51 million. Since the bank’s further public offerings were listed in the secondary market, the bank has observed largest turnover of shares for the past few weeks. According to Shrestha, small investors were mainly selling the stocks of Standard Chartered while many others have been purchasing the bank’s stocks lured by its announcement to provide bonus at the rate of 1:1. 

 

Similarly, Everest bank’s stocks worth Rs196.85 million were transacted. Nepal Life Insurance, RMDC Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha and Everest Insurance were also among the top five companies with largest turnover. 

 

Likewise, Siddhartha Equity Oriented Scheme, topped in terms of number of transacted shares with 215,000 units exchanging hands. 

 

Last week, the shares of 161 listed companies were traded. With a fall in the index, the transaction amount also declined 11.59 percent to Rs2.96 billion. The traded number of shares also fell to 4,908,060 units from 5,943,010 units.  

 

Agriculture Development Bank Bonus 11,812,800

Global IME Bank Bonus 9,862,828.06

Century Commercial Bank Bonus 3,689,000.20

Sagarmatha Finance Bonus 1,216,469

Deprox Laghubitta Bikas Bank Bonus 902,733.45

Innovative Development Bank Bonus 631,837.5

Mount Makalu Development Bank Bonus 41,600

Sagarmatha Finance Right 2,954,389