KATHMANDU, MAY 21
The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index lost most of the nearly five per cent recovery in the trading week between May 16 and 20, with the benchmark index slumping by 4.91 per cent or 115.33 points.
The sensitive index, which measures performance of class ‘A’ stocks, fell by 4.24 per cent or 19.23 points to 434.73 points.
Similarly, the float index that gauges performances of shares actually traded also took a dive of 4.87 per cent or 7.82 points to 152.87 points.
Altogether 13.07 million shares were traded during the trading week through 103,346 transactions that amounted to Rs 5.23 billion. The weekly turnover was 39 per cent lower than the preceding week when 20.55 million shares had changed hands through 160,262 transactions that totalled Rs 8.56 billion. While the market had remained closed on Monday due to Buddha Jayanti, the average daily turnover also fell by 24.06 per cent during the review period. The average daily turnover in the past week was Rs 1.71 billion and it dropped to Rs 1.30 billion this week.
The country’s secondary market had changed its trading days to Monday through Friday, in line with that of all public offices starting this week. As the share market was closed on Monday, benchmark index opened at 2,350.42 points on Tuesday and had lost 84.90 points over the course of the day to close at 2,265.52 points with a turnover of Rs 1.64 billion.
On Wednesday, the Nepse index rose by 8.91 points to close at 2,274.43 points, with daily turnover at just Rs 1.32 billion. The benchmark index remained southbound for the rest of the trading week. On Thursday the Nepse index fell by 23.51 points to close at 2,250.91 and the daily turnover also dropped to Rs 1.30 billion. The market further fell by 15.83 points on Friday to close the trading week at 2,235.09 points.
Indices of all 13 subgroups landed in the red this week, with the life insurance subgroup leading the group with a plunge of 8.29 per cent or 986.55 points to 10,911.13 points. Close on its heels, others sub-index slumped by 8.23 per cent or 150.06 points to 1,674.14 points, finance by 7.89 per cent or 139.84 points to 1,631.69 points and non-life insurance by 7.81 per cent or 809.04 points to 9,548.77 points.
Trading lost 6.62 per cent or 136.67 points to 1,929.32 points, development banks was down 5.49 per cent or 224.17 points to 3,855.70 points and hydropower dropped 5.32 per cent or 143.66 points to 2,557.66 points.
Investment subgroup fell by 4.67 per cent or 3.58 points to 73.16 points, microfinance was down 4.32 per cent or 207.68 points to 4,596.26 points, manufacturing and processing lost 3.68 per cent or 205.03 points to 5,369.31 points and hotels and tourism landed at 2,892.79 points after losing 97.01 points or 3.24 per cent.
Banking, the subgroup with highest weightage on market capitalisation, was down 2.98 per cent or 47.37 points to 1,543.78 points. Mutual funds shed 0.65 per cent or 0.10 point to 15.31 points.
A version of this article appears in the print on May 22, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.