Low Investor Confidence Makes Nepse Flounder

The secondary market is losing steam as it has come down to hover at the 600point mark in a year. Last October, it was hovering at the 950-point mark.

Low investor confidence and uncertainty are pulling the secondary market index down, though this week it posted a consolation gain of 5.18 points to 609.55 points from last week's closing of 604.37 points.

The commercial banks, others and development banks sub-groups gained to push Nepse up as they posted 6.67 points gain to 595.63 points, 11.75 points gain to 657.94 points and 5.07 points gain to 657.72 points, respectively. Of the nine subgroups, two did not see any trading this week and three sub-groups -- hydropower, trading and finance -- lost.

The hydropower subgroup lost 13.74 points to drop to 813.95 points, trading 4.89 points to drop to 256.41 points and finance 6.87 points to drop to 627.27 points, respectively.

This week's top performers were National Hydropower (with Rs 100.21 million), Standard Chartered Bank Nepal (with Rs 52.21 million), Nepal Bangladesh Bank (with Rs 26.82 million), Nepal SBI Bank (with Rs 20.39 million) and Citizens' Bank International (with Rs 15.68 million).

The secondary market began the week in the red as it shed 5.04 points to 599.33 points. On Monday too, the market was in the red zone but from Tuesday and over the last three days it tried to bounce back -though marginally.

The 78-scrip sensitive index -- considered blue chip shares in the domestic market -- gained 1.14 points to go up to 153.67 from the Sunday morning's opening of 152.53 points. Similarly, the float index -- calculated on the basis of real transactions -- also gained by a mere 0.32 point to reach 58.16 points from Sunday's opening of 57.84 points.

The transaction amount for this week increased by 31.48 per cent to Rs 370.13 million against last week's increase of 12.10 per cent.

However, the contribution of Group-A companies decreased to 44.89 per cent from last week's 53.75 per cent.

This week 5,44,305-unit rights shares of Navadurga Finance were listed at Nepse.

In terms of transaction amount and number of shares, National Hydro topped the chart. National Hydro's 11,75,000-unit shares changed hands for Rs 100.21 million but in terms of number of trading Pashupati Development Bank topped the chart with 373 tradings.