Kathmandu, September 9 :

After a brief recovery last week, share trading at Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) this week faltered, as the index dropped by 1.16 points.

The major players including the commercial banks experienced shortfall in their share prices, which also resulted in overall decrease in the Nepse index. The Nepse had registered 3.43 points growth last week.

The weekly trading began at 382.63 points on Sunday and dropped to 382.50 points on second day, which further declined to 380.92 points on Tuesday. However, it closed at 381.47 points on Thursday.

Along with decline in the index, market capitalisation and the number of shares traded for the week have also declined.

According to Nepse, a total of 300,093 units of shares worth over Rs 107.5 million were traded through 1,573 transactions this week, against the last week’s trading of 399,017 shares from 1,765 transactions at Rs 119.7 million. Of the listed 72 companies for share trading, 64 companies saw their transaction this week.

The weekly trading report shows that out of eight groups, the three groups registered growth, while four groups witnessed loss and a group remained constant.

The manufacturing group recovered this week with a growth of 5.47 points, while other group registered a marginal growth.

The trading of these two groups began at 316.82 points and 412.09 points respectively. The Nepse index of the manufacturing group closed at 322.29 points, whereas the other group closed at 413.96 points.

Likewise, the finance group’s index closed at 264.48 points on Thursday from the opening 263.72 points. The trading group also registered a growth, as its index closed up at 150.72 points from the opening 148.11 points.

On other hand, the index of commercial banks group, the largest scrip by volume at Nepse, declined by 2.57 points. The group, which had bagged an impressive growth last week, began trading at 426.95 points and settled at 424.38 points on the closing day.

The insurance group and the development banks group are also the losers this week as their indices dropped respectively by 2.13 points and 4.32 points.

The trading of the insurance group began at 395.11 points on Sunday and landed at 392.98 points on the last day, while the development bank’s index dropped to 308.05 points on Thursday from the opening 312.37 points.

The hotel group, meanwhile, saw no change in its index and remained constant at 179.62 points throughout the week.

The commercial banks group continued to dominate the Nepse floor by capturing a lion share. The group cornered 80.83 per cent of the trading. The finance group followed it and stood second with 9.07 per cent, while the insurance group held 5.27 per cent.

In terms of maximum number of transactions, Siddhartha Bank Ltd topped the race with 286 transactions.

But, Kumari Bank Ltd outshone others to have the largest number of shares and monetary value traded for the week. A total of 60,225 unit shares of the bank were traded at Rs 26.7 million.