Kathmandu, November 18 :

Following an impressive growth for over two months, the bull run on Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) is halted. Bad performance of the commercial banks group has pushed the Nepse index by 1.26 points down.

Trading at the country’s sole secondary market began at 448.69 points on Sunday and closed at 447.43 points.

It had, however, registered a whopping 29.87 points growth last week.

The trading showed the signs of fluctuation throughout the week as it dropped to 441 points on the second day and bounced back to 445.03 points on Tuesday, which went further up to 448.12 points on Wednesday but dropped to 447.43 points on the closing day.

This week turned out to be profitable for the companies under the finance, insurance, other and development banks groups, while the commercial banks group suffered a loss and the other three groups remained constant.

According to the Nepse, this week’s turnover stood at Rs 208.9 million with 447,272 unit shares having been traded through 2,365 transactions. A total of 417,338 unit shares worth over Rs 243.6 million were traded through 2,453 transactions. Out of the 66 listed companies for share trading, 57 companies saw their transactions this week.

The other group posted a massive growth this week, as its index recorded a whooping 82.62 points growth. The group began its trading at 467.93 points on Sunday and jumped to 550.55 points on Thursday. The group had posted a sound growth last week, too.

The development banks group also recorded an impressive growth of 31.69 points and closed at 380.90 points.

The group opened at 349.21 points on Sunday.

Likewise, the finance and the insurance groups also posted a growth of 3.19 points and 6.38 points respectively. The finance group began its trading at 277.52 points and closed at 280.71 points, while the insurance group closed at 404.24 points from the opening 297.86 points on Sunday.

On the other hand, the largest scrip at the Nepse — the commercial banks group suffered a heavy loss, which resulted in overall drop of the Nepse index.

The group, which had registered an impressive growth last week, suffered a loss of 14.25 points this week. The group began its trading at 522.45 points on Sunday and closed at 508.20 points.

The Nepse indices of the manufacturing, hotel, and trading groups, meanwhile, remained unchanged throughout the week at 314.69 points, 181.04 points and 149.71 points, respectively. All these groups had not a single trading last week, too.

The commercial banks group dominated the Nepse floor, as it continued to capture a lion’s share of the total transaction. The group’s share accounted for 64.98 per cent and finance group had 16.79 per cent in the total trading, while the other group captured 15.34 per cent share. The development banks group cornered two per cent and the insurance group had a 0.69 per cent share in the total transaction.

Chilime Hydropower Company topped all in terms of turnover and the number of shares traded for the week. A total of 50,750 shares of the company traded at Rs 31.84 million. But Business Development Finance Institute outshone others in maximum number of transactions with 367 transactions.

The floor opened for five days under a regular lot this week, where the shares of Nepal Investment Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Himalayan Bank Ltd, Nepal SBI Bank, Nepal Bangladesh Bank, Bank of Kathmandu, Machhapuchhre Bank, Kumari Bank, Lumbini Bank, Siddhartha Bank, NCC Bank and Chilime Hydropower Company were traded throughout the week.