Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) shed 32.43 points to close at 1,191.98 points last week, as the Monetary Policy 2018-19 unveiled on Wednesday by the Nepal Rastra Bank shook investor confidence.

Despite a fall in the market index, the daily turnover amount almost doubled to over Rs400 million compared to the previous week.    

The market that opened at 1,224.41 points on Sunday slipped marginally by 0.02 points to close at 1,224.39 points. On Monday, the market index lost 17.96 points and closed at 1,206.43 points.

The trend continued for the rest of the trading days, with the market declining by 0.5 points, 0.29 points and 13.66 points on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Consequently, the market closed with a downfall of 2.64 percent in the overall trading days.

Stockbrokers attributed the fall in Nepse mainly to the influence of the monetary policy.

“During the first half of the week before the Monetary Policy was unveiled, investors were mulling if the NRB would increase threshold of the margin loan from existing 50 percent. However, once the Monetary Policy was made public, it failed to meet investors’ expectations and negatively affected the stock market,” said a stockbroker under condition of anonymity.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also went down 6.41 points to close at 251.05 points as the entire trading groups landed in the red.  

Along with a fall in the market index, the average value of the shares listed on the stock market also downsized by Rs37.36 billion, as the market capitalisation fell to Rs1,411.01 billion from Rs1,448.37 billion during the review period.

The sub-indices of all ten trading groups went down last week. Index of insurance companies was the biggest loser, dropping 255.79 points to close at 6,008.94 points.

Hotels lost 105.81 points, hydropower lost 60.99 points, microfinance lost 49.55 points and development banks lost 36.6 points. These were followed by manufacturing (29.81 points), commercial banks (24.83 points), finance companies (12.2 points), ‘others’ (5.76 points) and trading (3.38 points).   

Of the individual companies, Everest Insurance led in terms of transaction amount. The company witnessed the turnover of its shares worth Rs152.5 million.

Likewise, promoters’ shares of Prime Life Insurance worth Rs107.24 million were traded over the review period. Nepal Doorsanchar Company, Laxmi Bank Limited and Chhimek Laghubitta Bittiya Sanstha were among others in the segment.

Likewise, 390,000 units of promoters’ shares belonging to Kumari Bank Limited were traded over the review period to lead the list of number of traded shares.

Last week, stocks of 191 listed companies were traded. Despite the fall in market index, the transaction amount escalated 58.44 percent to Rs2.11 billion. The traded number of shares also inclined to 6,112,370 units from 4,254,550 units.