WEEKLY SHARE UPDATE - Bearish Trend Savages Nepse

Almost all sub-groups -- among the nine -- lost this week to pull the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index down by 21.14 points to 660.40 points from Sunday morning's opening of 681.54 points. Except for two sub-groups -- hotels and trading -- that did not see any trading of their shares in the secondary market this week, all the other seven sub-groups -- commercial banks, hydropower, development banks, finance companies, insurance companies, others and manufacturing sub--- groups performed badly due to low investor confidence and rumours of promoter shares flooding the secondary market.

However, 84.26 million-unit bonus and rights shares of two banks, one development bank and a finance company, were added in the secondary market.

The week started in the red, losing 10.39 points to 671.15 points. Last August 31, Nepse had created history by touching a record 1175.38 points but this August 31 -- the first day of this week's trading -- Nepse touched a low of 671.15 points and continued to drop throughout the week. Only on one day -- Wednesday -did Nepse gain a consolation 5.77 points to close the week's trading at 660.40 points.

This week, Bank of Kathmandu topped the chart in terms of transaction amount with Rs 36.22 million. Nabil Bank followed with Rs 35.25 million and Standard Chartered Bank Nepal came third with Rs 34.98 million. IME Finance with Rs 19.46 million and Nepal SBI Bank with Rs 18.53 million managed to come in the top five.

In terms of number of share units traded, National Hydropower Company topped the chart with 31,000-unit shares changing hands while in terms of number of transactions Bank of Asia Nepal topped the chart with 446 transactions.

The transaction amount decreased by a whopping 32.63 per cent this week against last week's 19.46 per cent.

Group-A companies contributed 67.75 per cent as against last week's 62.89 per cent. The 78scrip sensitive index -- a barometer of Group-A companies -- lost 6.59 points to 173.62 points and the float index -- calculated on the basis of real transactions -also slid down by 2.28 points to 63.67 points from Sunday morning's opening of 65.95 points.

In the coming weeks too, Nepse is likely to continue to drop as most of the banks and financial institutes are closing their books for their annual general meetings. As always, the booksclosing will pull Nepse down. This week, on September 8 Nabil Bank is closing its books.