Kathmandu, February 28:

Unlike in the past weeks, this week the major market propellers, commercial banks and development banks’ groups, lost pulling Nepse down whereas the hydropower, insurance and finance company groups gained.

The commercial banks and development banks groups pulled Nepse down by 22.08 points to push it to 677.52 points from last week’s closing of 699.60 points. The sensitive index — a barometer of 78 Group-A companies — also lost 4.07 points to drop to 178.60 points from last week’s 182.67 points. Similarly, the float index — calculated on the basis of real transactions - also lost 1.59 points to drop to 65.90 points from last week’s 67.49 points.

In the three-day trading session this week — due to public holidays on Monday and Wednesday — the indices of development banks plunged by a whopping 49.63 points to slide to 931.65 points while those of commercial banks lost 23.55 points and dropped to 668.61 points.

However, last week’s loser hydropower companies group this week gained 4.77 points to go up to 838.78 points. Similarly, insurance companies gained 21.57 points to reach 693.72 points while finance companies gained 1.47 points to reach 795.81 points. Though the market opened in the green on Sunday, Nepse could not continue its bullish trend on the other following days.

Nepse surged by 4.50 points to reach 704.10 points from last Thursday’s closing of 699.60 points. However, the Nepse index plunged by 8.18 points to drop to 695.92 points on Tuesday. Thursday, the last day of trading in the domestic market also witnessed a huge fall of 18.40 points to close the weekly market at 699.52 points.

The transaction amount for this week also decreased by 21.19 per cent to Rs 244.63 million against last week’s 35.68 per cent rise. Group A companies’ shares dominated this week’s trading as the group witnessed 78.44 per cent of the transaction against last week’s 59.63 per cent. Against last week’s transaction of 79 listed companies, only 72 companies saw their scrips being traded this week.

This week’s top performers were Bank of Kathmandu (with Rs 27.82 million), Standard Chartered Bank Nepal (with Rs 23.83 million), Laxmi Bank (with Rs 20.58 million), Nabil Bank (with Rs 14.49 million) and Nepal SBI Bank (with Rs 11.21 million).

In terms of share units traded, Laxmi Bank topped the chart with 22,000-unit shares this week whereas in terms of number of transactions Nepal Development and Employment Promotion Bank topped the chart with 436 transactions.

This week, Merchant Finance listed its 3,00,000-unit primary shares at Nepse that did not see any transaction of bonds and debentures.