Kathmandu, December 26

The continuous drop in the secondary market has brought the local bourse to a nine-month low today. The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index plunged by 20.64 points or 1.41 per cent to 1,447.04 points, which is the lowest after March 21, when it had closed at 1,462.23 points.

The Nepse index has been consistently falling after November 30 when the index had reached 1,537.67 points. After the results of the provincial and parliamentary elections were published, the market index has remained southbound.

Today, the benchmark index had opened at 1,467.89 points and fell to 1,449.72 points within an hour of trading. Later the market gained some stability and managed to edge up a bit to close at 1,447.04 points by the end of the day.

Ishwari Rimal, chief executive officer of Nepal Stock House, stated that the secondary market index has been affected due to two major technical reasons — tight money supply in the market and excess supply of shares in the secondary market.

“Technical reasons have affected the market in this period. The latest political development could also be a reason, however it has had no significant effect on investors,” he stated.

Along with the Nepse index, the sensitive and float indices also dropped during the four hours of trading today. The sensitive index fell by 4.16 points or 1.35 per cent to 304.85 points and the float index fell by 1.72 points or 1.63 per cent to 103.67 points.

Altogether, 1,038,298 shares of 159 companies worth Rs 540.29 million were traded through 6,205 transactions during the day.

Besides the sub-index of others, all the sectors landed in the red zone. The banking sector declined by 18.21 points or 1.54 per cent to 1,239.66 points, trading group fell by 4.73 points or 2.41 per cent to 191.55 points and the hotels group descended by 23.44 points or 1.11 per cent to 2,085.39 points.

Moreover, the sub-index of development banks plunged by 36.91 points or 2.21 per cent to 1,633.55 points, hydropower sector descended by 36.62 points or 1.84 per cent to 1,949.53 points, finance companies fell by 16.16 points or 2.16 per cent to 733.42 points and the insurance sector lost 138.81 points or 1.83 per cent to 7,436.52 points.

Likewise, the manufacturing sector dropped by 30.59 points or 1.21 per cent to 2,497.84 points and microfinance group fell by 32.67 points or 1.84 per cent to 1,746.06 points.

Meanwhile, the others sector inched up by 0.82 per cent or 6.94 points to 848.54 points.

Standard Chartered Bank topped the list in terms of turnover with Rs 83.38 million and the last trading price of its share was Rs 2,010. Similarly, Nepal Telecom was the forerunner in terms of total traded shares with 82,110 units of its shares changing hands.