Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, July 23:

With improvement in share prices of leading groups like commercial and development banks, share trading at the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) continued its bullish trend for the last couple of weeks. The Nepse index registered a growth of 2.98 points this week. According to figures released by the Nepal Stock Exchange Ltd, the weekly share trading index opened at 287.90 points on Monday, and closed at 290.88 on Thursday, the last day for share transactions under the regular lot. Share trading had recorded a growth of 1.60 points last week. Propelled by healthy trading, the commercial banks group continued on growth track, while the development banks group posted a good comeback. Finance, hotel and insurance groups followed them. The other and the manufacturing group were losers this week, while the trading group remained constant. The total weekly transaction value, however, decreased this week and stood at Rs 27,551,064 from 1,510 transactions of 109,161 share units. The last week’s total trading value was Rs 61,806,378 through 1,208 transactions of 2,275,996 shares. Of the listed 66 companies for share trading, 55 companies saw their transactions this week.

The commercial banks group, the largest scrip by volume at the Nepse floor posted a healthy growth of 5.20 points. The group, which had gained about one point last week, opened at 306.52 points and closed up at 311.72 points on Thursday. The development banks group posted a healthy growth of 8.69 points. The group’s Nepse index that opened at 241.85 points on Monday closed at 250.54 points. Likewise, the hotel group posted a growth of 1.15 points, as its index closed at 179.15 points on the closing day. The finance and the insurance groups also posted growths in their respective indices. The indices of these groups opened at 228.54 points and 319.95 points and closed at 228.84 points and 321.24 points respectively.

However, the other group suffered a heavy loss of about nine points due to companies under the group not performing well in recent months. The group, which had opened at 347.65 points on the opening day, dropped to 338.76 points on the closing day. The manufacturing group also suffered a loss. Albeit marginally, its index declined to 276.45 points from the opening 276.50 points. The trading group, however, remained constant at 123.20 points throughout the week.

Of the eight groups, the commercial banks group continued to dominate all by the volume of its transactions. It captured 68.33 per cent of the total shares traded. The insurance group came in behind, accounting for 18.61 per cent. The finance group had 11.05 per cent, while the development banks group contributed 0.92 per cent. The other group followed with a share of 0.60 per cent and the hotel group cornered 0.29 per cent, while the manufacturing group had a share of 0.19 per cent. Birgunj Finance Ltd topped all companies in terms of number of transactions with 528 transactions this week. United Insurance Company Ltd came ahead in terms of the number of shares and monetary value traded for the week.