Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, May 28:

Continuous fall in major scrips led to a drop in share trading at Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) for yet another week. The Nepse index fell by 3.38 points this week, revealing a waning investors’ confidence. Weekly share trading at the country’s sole secondary market opened on Monday with its index at 279.73 points and went down to close at 276.35 points on the closing day. Although finance and insurance groups registered a marginal growth, leading groups like commercial bank, manufacturing and development bank couldn’t perform well. This led to an overall fall in the Nepse index, according to weekly share trading analysis.

According to information released by Nepal Stock Exchange Ltd, the total weekly transaction value also decreased compared to last week. This week’s total transaction value stood at Rs 31,695,749 from 1,660 transactions of 97,125 share units.

However, last week’s total trading value was Rs 48,975,288 through 1,780 transactions of 135,505 shares. Among the gainers, the finance group posted a growth of 1.46 points. The group’s bourse, which had also registered a growth last week, closed at 227.68 points on the closing day. The group opened at 226.22 points on the opening day. The insurance group, which had lost last week, went up to close at 296.03 points from the opening 295.80 points.

However, losses for the commercial bank group, the largest scrip at Nepse, continued for the fourth week. The group’s index fell by 5.37 points to settle at 291.32 points on the closing day. The index opened at 296.69 points at the beginning of the week. The manufacturing group’s index suffered a loss of 1.64 points.

The group opened at 277.88 points and went down to close at 276.24 points. Likewise the development bank, which started sliding since last week, closed down at 250.55 points. Earlier the group had opened at 251.15 points on Monday. The hotel group, the trading group and the other group, however, remained constant at 176.28 points, 118.97 points and 336.63 points respectively. All these groups suffered a loss last week. Despite loses, the commercial bank group continued to dominate the Nepse floor. The group captured the largest chunk of total share trading at 81.49 per cent. It was followed by the finance group at 1,012 per cent.

The insurance group was in the third position with 7.75 per cent. The other group cornered 0.49 per cent and the hotel group contributed 0.06 per cent, while the development bank group had a mere share of 0.05 per cent.

Gorkha Finance Ltd topped the race in terms of number of transactions with 208 transactions in total. But Laxmi Bank Ltd stood first in terms of monetary value and number of shares traded during the week. A total of 14,390 shares of the bank were traded for Rs 4,290,360.

The Nepse floor remained open for four working days under the regular lot, where shares of Nabil Bank Ltd, Nepal Investment Bank Ltd, Standard Chartered Bank Nepal, Nepal SBI Bank, Nepal Bangladesh Bank, Everest Bank Ltd, Bank of Kathmandu, NIC Bank, Lumbini Bank Ltd, Machhapuchre Bank Ltd, Laxmi Bank Ltd, NCC Bank Ltd, Nepal Life Insurance Company, Nepal Sri Lanka Merchant Bank and Standard Finance Ltd were traded. The shares of Himalayan Bank Ltd, Kumari Bank Ltd, Life Insurance Corporation, Nepal Merchant Banking and Finance, NB Finance Ltd and Kist Merchant Banking and Finance were traded for three days.