Money
Nepse index plunges 14.63 points
The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index plunged 14.63 points last week as investors sold stocks to purchase rights shares being issued by numerous listed companies.The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index plunged 14.63 points last week as investors sold stocks to purchase rights shares being issued by numerous listed companies.
The secondary market that opened at 1,568.35 points on Sunday added up 3.57 in its index to close at 1,571.92 points. On Monday, the market shed 3.62 points to close at 1,568.3 points. The index continued to slid on Tuesday and Wednesday, dropping 0.66 points and 13.92 points respectively. Nepse halted trading on Thursday to celebrate Chhath festival, a public holiday.
As a result, the overall market index fell 0.93 percent over the last week.
Bishnu Sapkota, managing director of Neev Securities, considered the slight fall in Nepse as market correction. “As the market size had grown by a large volume in the recent days, a slight fall in the market index is usual,” Sapkota said. “The market could also have been affected adversely by investors selling existing stocks to purchase rights shares issued by a number of listed companies.”
The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also dropped 3.08 points to close at 327.02 points with a fall in index of the majority of sub groups including commercial banks, development banks and insurance companies.
With a fall in the market index, the average value of shares listed on the stock market also went down Rs16.51 billion, with market capitalisation reaching Rs1,803.49 billion from Rs1,820 billion over the review period.
Except for the sub-groups of trading and ‘others,’ the remaining sub-groups dropped points in their indices. Manufacturing witnessed a fall of 77.96 points, the largest of all, to close at 2,473.01 points. Sapkota attributed the fall to Unilever Nepal, the only player in manufacturing sub-group, closing their books.
Likewise, insurance lost 76.13 points to close at 8,518.23 points. In the losers’ lists, hotels shed 42.75 points, hydropower companies 38.36 points, development banks 31.86 points, commercial banks 20.63 and finance companies witnessed downturn of 5.6 points.
‘Others’ was the only group that witnessed a gain of 45.11 points in its index to close at 836.4 points. The trading group however was stable at 228.46 points throughout the weekdays.
Sapkota opined that the market could witness an uptick next week as listed companies, particularly commercial banks, were likely to post good financial reports in the first quarter of this fiscal year. Last week, the total turnover amount in the stock exchange market stood at Rs1.71 billion, a downfall of 21.19 percent compared to the previous week’s transaction amount.