Kathmandu, June 16:

The bull trend at Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) scaled a new historic high this week, as gullible investors rushed to the market to purchase shares.

Despite a warning from Nepal Stock Exchange Ltd, investors’ rush did not cool down and the stock market continued to clock a double digit growth for the third consecutive week.

The stock trading closed at a new high of 575.04 points with the Nepse index registering an impressive growth of 15.89 points, supported mainly by increasing prices of commercial banks and other leading scrips. Share trading at the country’s sole secondary market began at 559.15 points on Sunday.

A bull trend at the country’s sole secondary market began three weeks back with the Nepse rising by over16 points.

The Nepse floor opened for five days under the regular lot and trading saw a mixed trend with the index gaining height on the first three days. The index rose to 564.51 points on the second day, 572.72 points on the third and 583.55 points on the fourth day. However, it settled at 575.04 points on the last day.

The weekly turnover also increased significantly this week to Rs 281.3 million with 555,153 unit of shares having been traded through 1,729 transactions, against last week’s figure of Rs 217.5 million through the trading of 500,285 shares. Out of the total 94 listed companies for share trading, 66 companies saw transactions this week.

A group wise share trading analysis shows that all major groups including commercial banks and development banks group registered impressive growths. The hotel group is the sole loser this week.

The commercial banks group, which is the largest scrip by volume, continued to climb higher and posted an impressive growth of 22.57 points. The group closed higher at 637.22 points from an opening 641.65 points. The group had an impressive gain of over 19 points last week. Likewise, the development banks group also posted a healthy growth of 14.51 points, as its trading soared to 502.75 points from the opening 488.24 points on Sunday.

Among the gainers, the insurance group, too, managed a double-digit growth of 11.83 points. The group’s trading opened that at 533.52 points on Sunday went up to 545.35 points on the closing day.

The finance group’s index registered 3.06 points growth and closed at 461.22 points, while the hotel group gained 4.12 points and closed at 239.48 points. Of these two, the finance group began at 458.16 points, while the hotel group opened at 235.36 points. The manufacturing and other groups’ indices rose to 339.70 points and 750.34 points respectively from the opening of 339.49 points and 749.67 points. The trading group, meanwhile, remained constant at 155.21 points, as the group didn’t have a single transaction throughout the week.

Machhapuchhre Bank Ltd topped all other companies in terms of the largest monetary value from the share trading. The bank’s transactions stood at Rs 44,407,675.