Nepse Thuds Below 600-pt Mark

All sub-groups meet Waterloo as week's trading opens

The week started on a gloomy note as all sub-groups lost today on the first day of trading in the domestic market, pulling Nepse below the 600point mark.

Nepse closed 5.04 points lower to rest at 599.33 points in today's trading after the key sub-groups performed poorly. The banking sub-group -- one of the key market propellers -- lost 6.2 points or 1.05 per cent to 582.76 from last week's closing.

Standard Chartered Bank Ltd and Citizens' Bank International Ltd were the top losers in today's trading.

Standard Chartered Bank Ltd closed at Rs 3,560 -- Rs 60 less than the earlier closing price. Its 3,889-unit of shares were traded at around Rs 3,600 per last week.

Similarly, Citizens Bank International Ltd closed at Rs 638 -- Rs 42 less than earlier closing and traded 3,640-unit shares. The low confidence of investors has been clearly reflected in the trading at the sole secondary market in the past two months. The sensitive index also lost 1.01 points to drop to 151.52 points today.

The only sub-group that gained was develeopment banks. However, it gained a marginal 0.85 point to go up to 654.5 points and thus could not push the market up.

Though today's total market capitalisation was Rs 420,197.01 million, the floated market capitalisation -- the real transaction -- stands at Rs 81,996.65 million.

Last October, Nepse was hovering at around 970 points.

It has lost around 40 per cent in one year.