Kathmandu, February 3

The bull run in the country’s only secondary market continued for the fourth consecutive trading day of the week, with the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index recording a fresh all-time-high of 1,242.13 points today.

As of last week, the country’s only bourse had clocked six weekly gains.

The continuous bull run in the stock market is largely backed by liquidity flush and lack of investment opportunities in the country at present, according to Rabindra Bhattarai, a stock market analyst.

A more simplified share transaction system developed with the full-fledged implementation of dematerialised trading system in the secondary market since January 17 has also attracted investors towards the secondary market. The Securities Board of Nepal (SEBON) — regulator of the securities market in the country — had implemented full-fledged automation in share transaction to facilitate investors in trading.

Supply of stocks is still limited because a large chunk of stocks of listed companies are yet to be dematerialised. According to CDS and Clearing Ltd, a total of 365,769,689 shares of 184 listed companies have been dematerialised as of today.

Altogether, 184 firms out of 232 listed companies have acquired membership of Central Depository System and Clearing Ltd till date. The listed firms need to acquire membership of CDS and Clearing Ltd for admission of their securities for dematerialisation. Nepse has suspended trading of shares of the listed companies that have not obtained the membership of CDS and Clearing Ltd to dematerialise their stocks.

The bull run in the stock market today was led by the development bank subgroup. The development bank sub-index increased by 2.31 per cent or 28.69 points to land at 1,270.35 points. Finance and others subgroups also witnessed gains today as their sub-indices surged by 0.68 per cent and 0.15 per cent to 603.55 points and 804.75 points, respectively.

However, banking, hotels, hydropower and insurance sub-groups ended in red zone — dipping 0.09 per cent to 1,132.69 points; 2.27 per cent to 1,767.18 points; 0.25 per cent to 2,137.65 points and 0.45 per cent to 5,427.70 points, respectively.

In total, 755,725 shares of 113 firms worth Rs 560 million changed hands through 2,707 transactions today. The sensitive index, which gauges the performance of class ‘A’ stocks, rose 0.07 per cent to 267.59 points. Likewise, the float index that measures the performance of shares actually traded also went up 0.24 per cent to 89.03 points.