Kathmandu, December 15: The Nepal Stock Exchange index last week (Dec 8 to 12) gained 40.72 points to close at 1,172.64 points with a large number of investors rushing to purchase the shares. Such a rush could be attributed to two factors. First, there is the availability of shares at low prices due to the long-prevailing bearish trend in the market. Second, the listed companies have announced impressive dividends by the listed companies through their annual general meetings.
The benchmark index that opened at 1,131.92 points gained 3.46 points on Sunday. On Monday and Tuesday, it went up by 13.51 points and 2.48 points respectively.
The benchmark index also stretched its gaining streak further towards the end of the week. It jumped 10.11 points on Wednesday and added another 11.17 points on Thursday. Overall, the benchmark index closed the week with a gain of 3.60 percent.
The sensitive index that measures the trading of shares of blue chips companies also went up 6.83 points to close at 255.60 points.
Except for the manufacturing, all the subgroups landed in the green during the review week.
Investors mostly bought the shares of insurance companies during the review week. As a result, the sub-index of non-life insurance firms went up by a whopping 13.63 percent or 564.26 points to 4,704.76 points while the same of life insurance subgroup surged by 7.74 percent or 416.45 points to 5,794.55 points.
The trading subgroup soared by 13.26 percent or 59.92 points to 511.87 points. Micro-finance rose by 7.65 percent or 118.26 points to 1,663.45 points and the hydropower subgroup went up by 4.59 percent or 42.82 points to 976.23 points.
The sub-index of the hotels ascended by 3.91 percent or 69.26 points to 1,839.30 points and the development banks sub-index advanced by 3.6 percent or 55.18 points to 1,589.02 points.
Similarly, the finance subgroup rose by 2.38 percent or 13.32 points to 572.28 points and the banking jumped by 2.2 percent or 22.57 points to 1,048.98 points. Others landed at 660.03 points, up 10.70 points or 1.65 percent,
Only the manufacturing subgroup suffered losses during the review period as its sub-index fell by 2.8 percent or 62.36 points to 2,166.09.
NMB Bank topped the chart in terms of number of transactions and weekly turnover, recording a total of 1,330 transactions that totaled Rs 139.35 million.
Deposit Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha with Rs 99.54 million, Nepal Bank with Rs 92.24 million, Machhapuchchhre Bank with Rs 88.63 million and Swabalamban Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha (Promoter Share) with Rs 82.85 million were ranked at second, third, fourth and fifth companies respectively when it comes to recording the highest turnover in the last week.
