Kathmandu, November 3: The Nepal Stock Exchange last week fell 3.17 points to close at 1,146.17 points after investors turn apathetic to invest in the capital market instruments amid festival season.
In the single-day transaction on Thursday (October 28) following the end of Tihar holidays, there was a turnover amount of Rs 254.31 million out of the trading of 1,060,196 units of shares. In the previous week, the average daily transaction amount stood at just Rs186.88 million.
“Due to the selling pressure in the secondary market triggered from the festival season, the market index tumbled along with the slight rise in the daily transaction volume,” said a stockbroker on condition of anonymity.
The sensitive index that measures the trading of shares of blue chips companies, however, added 0.03 points to close at 252.08 points.
Of the 11 trading groups, six closed the day in red. Non-life insurance group was the largest loser as its sub-index went down by 39.98 points. Likewise, life insurance also suffered a double-digit loss of 28.46 points. Hydropower, microfinance, commercial banks and finance companies were four other groups witnessing a downturn in their share transactions.
Manufacturing & Processing, “Others”, Hotels and Development Banks were four gainers during the review period. Of them, manufacturing & procession added 13.96 points in its sub-index, the largest of all.
With a decline in share prices of majority of the sub-groups, the market capitalization declined to Rs 1,456.50 billion from Rs 1,460.53 billion. Thus the investors had to Rs 4.03 billion in the book value of their investment portfolio.
Last week, promoter shares of Prime Commercial Bank witnessed the largest transaction volume of Rs 60.30 million. Mega Bank Nepal, Prabhu Bank, NIC Asia Bank and Siddhartha Bank were among the top five companies with large turnovers during the period.
