Kathmandu, October 25:

If you want to buy shares, these days just before Tihar are the best days as Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) has started puffing up. It’s a good time to buy banks’ shares, especially those that have not declared their bonus and dividends.

This week, Nepse closed at 14.64 points lower to finish at 919.33 points from 933.97 points last Thursday. This month, Nepse has not been posting growth as compared to the same period in earlier years. This year, the trend has reversed and Nepse witnessed a continuous decline. However, on the last two days of the week Nepse gained although it was negligible and the market closed at 919.33 points.

The week started in the red, with a loss of 15.35 points on Sunday and continued to dip on Monday and Tuesday. Nepse closed as low as 899.99 points on Monday. It picked up on Tuesday to reach 907.73 points and kept rising. On Wednesday, it added 6.27 points to touch 914.00 points and on Thursday it gained 5.33 points to close the sole secondary market at 919.33 points.

In terms of monetary value, Kist Merchant Banking and Finance (with Rs 522.71 million), Bank of Kathmandu (with Rs 176.51 million), Laxmi Bank Ltd (with Rs 60.78 million), Standard Chartered Bank Nepal Ltd (with Rs 52.38 million) and NIC Bank (with Rs 34.63 million), were this week’s top performers.

Shares of 76 of the total listed companies saw their transactions this week. However, there was no transaction of government bonds or debentures at Nepse.

This week, Kist Merchant Banking and Finance traded shares worth Rs 522.71 million to become the largest company in terms of volume of transactions. It traded the largest number of shares in terms of transactions (7,58,000-unit). In terms of number of transactions also, it topped the chart with Rs 1,117 transactions. This week, Nepse directed the brokers for immediate transfer of names of the shares bought as per the rule or face action.