NEPSE HITS 3 PERCENT CIRCUIT BREAKER; HOWEVER, PROFIT-TAKING LIMITS GAIN TO 1.32 PERCENT ONLY

Sharesansar, 13th July:

Fuelled by expectation of pro-market budget today as well as the central bank’s move to be flexible on the spread rate for BFIs, the only secondary stock market of the country surged by 3 percent, forcing the Nepal Stock Exchange Limited (NEPSE) to suspend the trading for 15 minutes in the initial hour.

However, later in the session, the market failed to keep up with its rally as the profit-booking in recent gainers dragged the market, limiting its incline only to 13.51 points or 1.32 percent.  The benchmark index today closed at 1036.98 level.

Last time the market observed circuit breaker was back in month of February where the market experienced four percent circuit breaker in upward direction.

Coming to today’s session, driven by the NRB decision to be flexible on spread rate, the banking scrips witnessed a heavy demand.

“As NRB has given permission to banking and financial institutions to include interest income from government securities-- which is less than one percent-- in calculating spread rate, the banking sectors will have opportunity to invest in sectors providing higher yield,” say one of the investors.

He further added that the outcome of this provision will lead to growth in the net profit of banking and financial institutions.

Banking and financial institutions related sub-indices i.e. Banking, Development and Finance added 14.97 points, 6.7 points and 0.79 point respectively.

Similarly, Trading and Insurance followed with gain of 0.78 points and 3.43 points respectively.

While, Others and Hydro led the subgroups with surge of 27.02 points and 21.03 points respectively. As for Hotels, it declined by 6.25 points.

 All in all, the scrips of 145 companies were traded, out of which 93 scrips gained, 11 remained intact and 41 scrips lost.

The best performer for the day were, Premier Insurance co. Ltd. (PIC), closed at Rs 671, with gain of Rs 61 or 10 percent. Whereas, Country Development Bank Ltd. (CNDBL), closed at Rs 215, was the worst performer today with Rs 23 or 9.66 percent loss.

In terms of turnover, Nepal Bank Limited (NBL), closed at Rs 445, had the highest turnover today. Altogether, 118,727 share units of NBL were traded through 157 transactions worth Rs 51,956,633.

The broker with the highest standalone dealing of NBL was Broker No 21 (Midas Stock Broking Company Pvt. Limited) with 12.26 percent totaling 29,531 shares trade amounting Rs 12,746,067 via 34 transactions, which includes three matching transactions tallying 3000 units worth Rs 1,292,000.

The market turnover today stood at Rs 750,447,037, with total number of shares traded at 1,701,584 units which were traded through 4,218 transactions. The market capitalization at the end of the day stood at Rs 1,057,959.31 Millions.