Kathmandu, February 21:

Except the hydropower companies group, all major market players gained this week to push the Nepse index up by 28.11 points to 699.60 points from last week’s 671.49 points.

The sensitive index — a barometer of 78 Group-A companies — also gained

8.62 points to surge to 182.67 points from last week’s 174.05 points. The float index — calculated on the basis of real transactions — gained 4.16 points to 67.49 points from last week’s 63.33 points.

In the four-day trading session this week, commercial banks, insurance companies, development banks and finance companies groups gained 42.54 points to go to 692.16 points, 20.77 points to go to 672.15 points, 12.81 points to go to 981.28 points and 1.81 points to go to 794.34 points, respectively. The hydropower companies group lost 14.93 points to dip to 834.01 points.

The market opened in the red on Sunday losing 1.64 points to drop to 669.75 points from last Thursday’s 671.49 points, but the remaining three days it witnessed growth and continued last week’s bullish trend, albeit at a slow pace.

Nepse surged by 3.36 points to reach 673.59 points on Monday. On Tuesday it gained 17.74 points to reach 690.25 points. On Thursday, the last day of transaction in the domestic secondary market, Nepse gained 9.35 points to close for the week at 699.60 points.

The transaction amount for this week also increased by 35.68 per cent to rise to Rs 310.42 million against last week’s Rs 228.77 million. Group A companies’ shares dominated this week’s trading as 59.63 per cent of the total transaction was of this group.

However, unlike last week when 79 listed companies saw their shares traded this week only 72 listed companies saw their shares traded.

This week’s top performers were Nabil Bank (with 63.57 million), Infrastructure Development Bank (with Rs 45.72 million), Malika Bikas Bank (with Rs 24.67 million), Bank of Kathmandu (with Rs 18.38 million) and Standard Chartered Bank (with Rs 12.23 million).

In terms of share units traded, Malika Bikas Bank topped the chart with 52,000-unit shares this week whereas in terms of number of transactions Infrastructure Development Bank topped the chart with 1610 transactions.

This week, Triveni Bikas Bank listed its 5,00,000-unit primary shares and Clean

Energy Development Bank listed its 32,00,000-unit primary shares at Nepse where

20 million-unit shares of Development Bond-2071-Ka were also listed.