Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) last week shed 32.88 points to close at a three-year low of 1,148.36 points, with the index failing to solve the glitch in the newly introduced online trading system. The losses were further exacerbated when investors dumped their existing shares to raise money to purchase primary shares issued of listed companies.

Despite a fall in the market index, the daily turnover rose to Rs303.89 million from Rs296 million in the previous week.

The secondary market that opened at 1,181.24 points on Sunday, slipped 14.81 points to close at 1,166.43 points. On Monday too, the Nepse lost 6.61 points and closed at 1,159.82 points. However, on Tuesday, the market gained 1.67 points before dipping again by 1.81 points and 11.32 points on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Consequently, the market closed with a downfall of 2.78 percent in overall trading days during the review period.

Stockbrokers said that the fall in Nepse was due to investors rushing to sell their existing stocks to raise money for purchasing the primary shares issued by Madhya Bhotekoshi Hydropower last week. “Even with the online trading platform still experiencing problems, investors continued to invest in the primary shares of companies,” said a stockbroker under condition of maintaining anonymity.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of Group ‘A’ companies also declined by 6.91 points to close at 244.15 points with a downswing in majority of the trading sub-indices  including commercial banks, a sub-index that holds the lion’s share in terms of market capitalisation.

With a fall in the market index, the average value of the shares listed on the stock market also declined Rs38.64 billion, as the market capitalisation fell to Rs1,369.85 billion from Rs1,408.49 billion.

Except for trading, the remaining sub-indices landed in the red last week. Non-life insurance lost the largest of 350.83 points to close at 5,131.25 points. It was followed by manufacturing (53.43 points), hotels (44.91 points), hydropower (32.75 points) and commercial banks of 26.12 points. Similarly, the index of development banks also slid 21.03 points, ‘others’ 6.21 points and finance companies by 5.45 points.

Trading gained 3.46 points to close at 237.35 points. 

Last week, stocks worth Rs1.51 billion were transacted, which was 2.02 percent more than the transaction amount in the previous week. The total number of traded shares also increased to 5,081,141 units from 4,815,292 units.