Kathmandu, March 15:

Nepse plunged by 43.94 points to 714.76 points from the closing of last week’s 758.70 points.

Hydropower group (loss of 75.91 points), Development banks (loss of 50.55 points) and Commercial banks group (loss of 50.55 points) — the key market players — pulled the Nepse down this week to the low of 714.76 points on the closing day of the trading. In December the Nepse was floating above 1000-ponits mark.

The trading of the companies under ‘A’ category captured 90.44 per cent of the total trading. But total transaction amount has gone down by 11.63 per cent.

After a marginal fall on Sunday by 1.96 points from last week’s closing to 756.74 points, it further plunged by 7.69 on Monday and 8.84 points on Tuesday. On Wednesday, it posted a whopping fall of 17.83 points and on Thursday, it registered a fall of 8.56 to close at 714.76 points.

Among the sectoral indices, Manufacturing and Hotels group posted 12.08 points and 3.16 points growth to 410.52 points and 414.79 points, respectively from Sunday’s closing.

Rest of the groups — except for Others group that saw no transaction — ended in negative territory recording losses. In terms of monetary value, Bank of Kathmandu, Standard Chartered Bank, nabil Bank, Kumari Bank and Nepal Share Market and Finance are the gainers for this week.

Bank of Kathmandu topped the chart in terms of monetary value with Rs 33.85 million and in terms of number of shares traded, National Hydropower topped the chart with 45,000 units of shares. However, in terms of number of transaction, ICFC Finance Institute topped the chart with 458 transactions.

Nepse has listed one million unit of ordinary shares of Siddhartha Insurance Ltd in the secondary market this week. With this listing, number of listed insurance companies reached 17.

NRB half-yearly report:

KATHMANDU: The year-on-year Nepse index increased by 78.5 per cent to 958.91 points in mid-January. This index was 537.09 a year ago, according to Nepal Rastra Bank. Nepali share market witnessed a significant growth in the first five months of the current fiscal year.

However, the expansion was neither supported by fundamentals nor by technical analysis. The flip side of this share price ballooning was reflected in the increased margin lending by banks and financial institutions. Such lending stood at Rs 10.54 billion as of January 4, compared to Rs 4.6 billion a year ago.

Nepal Rastra Bank, the regulatory authority, issued directive to financial institutions to effectively manage margin lending on January 22. The year-on-year market capitalisation increased by 58.35 per cent to Rs 301.86 billion in mid-January. Market capitalisation to GDP ratio increased to 38 per cent from 19 per cent a year ago. — HNS