Kathmandu, December 08 : The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week (Dec 1-5) gained 19.13 points to close at 1,131.92 points. Such increment could be attributed to the rush on the part of investors to purchase shares that were available in much lower prices with the long prevailing bearish trend in the secondary market.
On Sunday, the local bourse that opened at 1,112.79 points inched 0.06 points higher while on Monday it saw a modest dip of 0.86 points.
In the latter three trading days, the benchmark index continued to move up. It inched up by 3.75 points, 8.73 points and 7.45 points on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Overall, the benchmark index closed the week with a gain of 1.72 percent.
According to stockbrokers, the stock market saw an upward spiral last week after being dropped to the multi-year low of around 1,100 points, thus taking the share prices to much lower level. “As such, many buyers resorted to accumulating stocks at some of the cheapest levels,” said a stockbroker on condition of anonymity.
The sensitive index that measures the trading of shares of blue chips companies also went up 2.12 points to close at 248.77 points during the review period.
Regarding the sector-wise analysis, the Insurance Group the led last week’s rally. The sub-indices of Life Insurance and Non-Life Insurance shot up by 8.59 percent and 4.29 percent respectively. The Microfinance sub-index also jumped 4.35 percent.
Similarly, the Hydropower Group posted a gain of 2.41 percent. ‘Others’, Hotels and Mutual Fund also rose by over 1 percent each. The banking sub-index added 0.51 percent. In fact, all the sectors closed the last week in the green.
The market capitalisation of the secondary market increased to Rs 1,437.50 billion from Rs 1,411.95, thus raising Rs 25.55 billion in the book value of their investment portfolio.
As far as the stock transactions of individual companies go, Nepal Life Insurance Company posted the highest turnover of Rs 105.20 million. It was followed by shares of NMB Bank which saw a turnover of over Rs 95 million. NIC Asia Bank, Janautthan Samudayic Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha and Nabil Bank recorded the turnovers of Rs 65.14 million, Rs 46.49 million and Rs 45.98 million respectively.
