Regulators renew promises‚ Nepse gains again

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: The stock market inched a little upwards following the renewed interest of regulators to promote the ailing securities market, as the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index gained 3.53 points on the first week of year 2012 -January 1 to 6.

Recently, High Level Financial Sector Coordination Committee has directed to start the operation of Central Depository System by mid-January. Likewise, the committee has decided to pursue full automation of Nepal Stock Exchange in order to stimulate the stock market.

Likewise, the committee is also going to impose measures to reduce the cost of trading in Nepse within next few months. Moreover, the government has also decided to increase the ceiling for source disclosure while trading in the share market from the current Rs 1 million to Rs 10 million.

These measures are expected to improve the performance of the market and attract investors in the coming days.

On Sunday morning the stock market opened at 312.94 points that went up to 318.74 points by the end of trading. Next two days saw the market go up to 324.15 points following the finance minister’s visit to stock exchange. However, the benchmark index could not sustain the ascent so that it slumped to 318.99 points on Wednesday. The index rested for the week at 319.55 points.

Nepse saw trading of 486,233 unit shares of 116 companies on 5788 transactions in five trading days, this week. This is 38.33 per cent decline in trading volume as compared to that of last week.

Among the total transactions, the trading of blue chip stocks of class ‘A’ companies consisted of 70.18 per cent amounting to Rs 87.8 million.

The sensitive index that measures the Class-A companies’ performance went up by 1.12 points reaching 79.32 points at the end of the week. The float index that measures the performance of actual shares traded also increased by 0.16 points to 25.43 points.

This week, hydropower, insurance, development banks and finance companies ended up in red.

Thanks to Nepal Telecom Others subgroup earned 15.27 points. Commercial banks went up by 3.78 points followed closely by manufacturing companies that earned 3.51 points.

Hydropower and insurance companies lost 5.74 and 5.04 points, respectively. Likewise, finance companies and development banks went down by 0.89 points and 1.2 points,

respectively.

Everest Bank was forerunner both in terms of transaction amount and number of shares traded with the trading of 44,115 shares worth Rs 30 million. Gurans Life Insurance was fore runner in number of transaction with 589 transactions.

The top five performers of the week are Everest Bank (Rs 30.2 million), Bank of Kathmandu (Rs 16.26 million), Chilime Hydropower Company (Rs 9.30 million), Standard Chartered Bank (Rs 6.60 million) and Nabil Bank (Rs 4.50 million).