Kathmandu, May 26:

Commercial banks pulled share prices down this we-ek, as the country’s secon-dary market closed lower.

Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index dropped by 0.59 point to land at 525.05 points on the closing day, while it had opened at 525.64 points on Sunday. The stock market was on a growth path continuously for over the past six weeks and had gai-ned 1.75 points last week.

The weekly trading report shows that the Nepse floor opened for five days under a regular lot and the trading moved down on the first three days with its index dropping to 525.15 points on the second day, 522.23 points on the third day and 523.46 points the fourth day. However, it recovered a little on Thursday and closed at 525.05 points.

The weekly turnover, however, increased this week to Rs 174.6 million with 449,320 unit shares having been traded through 2,976 transactions, against last week’s figure of Rs 152 million through the trading of 356,997 shares. Out of the total 79 listed companies for share trading, 67 companies saw their transactions this week.

The group wise share trading analysis shows that the major groups including commercial banks and insurance suffered losses despite growth maintained by some other scrips including manufacturing, finance, development banks and other groups.

The commercial banks group, which is the largest scrip by volume, suffered a loss of 3.03 points, as the group closed down at 567.51 points from the opening 570.54 points. The group had maintained a steady growth for the last two months.

Likewise, insurance group has also been on a constant loss. The group’s index dropped by 2.49 points to land at 540.60 points. Its trading began at 543.09 points on Sunday.

On the other hand, the others group posted a sound growth of 14.48 points and closed at 727.26 points. The group opened its trading at 712.78 points.

Albeit marginal, the manufacturing and the hotel groups also managed growth as their indices went up to 330.70 points and 237.94 points from the opening 329.42 points and 236.79 points respectively.

The development banks group’s index closed higher at 448.40 points on Thursday from the opening 444.59 points. Among the gainers, the finance group registered a growth of 9.03 points, as it closed higher at 444.09 points. The group opened at 435.06 points on Sunday.

The trading group bounced back with an impressive growth of 6.50 points. The group closed higher at 155.21 points from the opening 148.71 points.

Lumbini Bank Ltd topped all other companies in monetary value. The bank’s transaction stood at Rs 25,545,750, while Shikhar Insurance Ltd outshone others in number of transaction with 729 transactions during this week. But, National Hydropower Co stood first in terms of number of shares traded this week. A total of 132,170 unit shares of the company exchanged hands.