Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) last week ( September 22 to 26) plunged by 25.49 points to close at 1,129.81 points after the investors started offloading the stocks they hold to manage expenses for the upcoming festivals.
With the bearish trend continuing in the stock market, its average daily turnover also dipped to Rs 200.39 million last week from Rs 378.55 million in the previous week.
The market that opened at 1,155.30 points on Sunday fell by 16.04 points to close at 1,139.26 points. On Monday, the market, however, posted a slight gain of 1.73 points. On the rest of the trading days, the market went down again by nominal points in each day transaction. The market shed 0.22 percent in stock prices in the overall transactions.
Stockbrokers said it is usually almost every year that the shares’ price dips when the festival season arrives. “Apart from this, the investors also rushed to book profit out of the rise in share prices in the previous week. This had affected the market growth adversely,” said Bharat Ranabhat, president of Stockbrokers’ Association Nepal.
In the previous week, the market had escalated by 50 points in the trading of subsequent two days after Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada urged fundraisers such as Employee Provident Fund and Citizen Investment Trust to invest in the stock exchange.
The market is in a slump despite a number of NEPSE-listed companies announcing the good amount of dividend of late,” said a stockbroker in the condition of anonymity.
The sensitive index that measures the performance of blue chips companies also went down by 4.89 points to close at 247.32 points. The sensitive index was affected with the decline in the indices of the majority of the trading groups along with that of the commercial banks that hold major share in the market capitalisation.
Last week, investors lost Rs 32.14 billion in the book value of their investment portfolio after the market capitalization declined to Rs 1,435.31 billion from Rs 1,467.45 billion.
During the review period, out of 11 trading groups, nine witnessed a downswing in their indices. Non-life insurance and life insurance were the largest losers with the downfall of three-digit point in their indices. While the non-life lost 184.52 points, the index of life insurance went down by 125.96 points.
Manufacturing, hotels, hydropower, microfinance, development banks, commercial banks, and finance companies were among other losers, all of which observed a fall of double-digit point. Trading and ‘others’ inched up by 4.63 points and 1.67 points respectively.
Last week, the stocks’ worth Rs 1 billion were traded which was almost half the trading volume in the previous week. The number of traded shares also went down to 4,041,920 units from 6,587,020 units.
Nepal Stock Exchange-listed 129,742,099 units of primary shares during the review period.
