Kathmandu, May 5:

As the share prices of commercial banks continued to rise, stock trading at Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) ended higher this week, too. The index posted a growth of over five points and closed at 514.65 points.

The stock trading is on a growth trend for last one month after it traversed through a rough path with the share prices going up and down. The Nepse had gained about four points last week and 5.56 points a week before that.

The weekly trading report of Nepse shows that its index closed at 514.65 points on Thursday from the opening 509.62 points on Sunday. The Nepse floor opened for three days under a regular lot this week and the trading registered growth on all the days with its index at 513.69 points on the second day.

The weekly turnover, however, dropped this week to Rs 85 million with 170,860 unit shares having been traded through 1,717 transactions during the week. A total of 3,86,391 unit shares worth over Rs 105.6 million were traded through 2,871 transactions. Out of the total 61 listed companies for share trading, 49 companies saw their transactions this week.

The group wise share trading data shows that the major gro-ups including commercial banks and finance groups continued a sound growth, while the insurance, hotel and development banks groups were the losers.

Among the gainers, the commercial banks group, which is the largest scrip by volume, posted a growth of 8.43 points. The group’s index closed up at 557.61 points from the opening 549.18 points. The group had gained over five points last week, too.

Likewise, the finance group gained 6.61 points and closed up at 441.62 points on Thursday. The group, which started gaining last week, opened its trading at 435.01 points on Sunday.

On the other hand, the insurance group suffered a major blow, as its index plummeted by 15.06 points. Its index opened at 576.33 points on Sunday and closed at 561.27 points.

The hotels group suffered a loss of 1.16 points and settled at 228.44 points from the opening 229.60 points. The development banks group, too, lost and closed its index at 442.99 points. Earlier the group began its trading at 444.24 points on Sunday. The other group’s index dropped to 670.05 points from the opening 670.39 points.

The manufacturing group and the trading group, however, remained constant at 329.42 points and 148.71 points respectively, as these groups had not a single trading throughout the week. The commercial banks group continued to dominate the floor, as it captured the majority of total trading. The group cornered 68.52 per cent of the total trading, while the development banks group came second with 12.29 per cent. The others group grabbed 11.99 per cent, the finance group had 5.30 per cent and the insurance group bagged 1.85 per cent share.

Bank of Kathmandu topped all other companies for having the largest value of trading for the week. The bank’s shares worth Rs 14,692,819 exchanged hands at the floor this week. But Sanima Development Bank stood first for having the highest number of transactions and share units. A total of 23,020 shares of the bank were traded through 865 transactions.