Trading volume at Nepse down

KATHMANDU,JUNE 17: 

Trading volume took a beating as the opening up of margin finance by Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) also failed to bring a cheer to the market that slumped by 5.11 points this week –– June 10 to 14. 

Despite NRB’s announcement to open margin finance through brokers’ guarantee on Sunday, the market did not respond as anticipated. Along with the benchmark index, trading volume dipped by 43.75 per cent as compared to the previous week. Last week too, Nepse had gone through a 25 per cent decline in trading volume.

Nepse had witnessed a bullish trend in the past few months due an agreement between the government and investors. But the trend could not last for long and the political turmoil after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on May 27 brought the capital market down. The uncertain political future is the major cause of the steady fall. 

Political instability has been hitting the economic and financial sectors hard as Nepal is in danger of being ‘blacklisted’ by the 

Financial Action Task Force if three Bills related to anti money laundering are not passed by June 18. 

The stock exchange witnessed trading worth Rs 169.5 million of 811,041 unit shares belonging to 114 companies in 6316 transactions. The volume of trading of blue chip stocks also took a beating as trading of stocks belonging to class ‘A’ companies consisted of 53.28 per cent of total transaction worth Rs 93 million. 

The sensitive index which measures performance of blue chip stocks went down by 1.3 points. The float index also went down by 0.78 points to 28.93 points. 

The market that opened at 369.78 points on Sunday morning went down to 363.54 points by the end of trading that day. The index kept sliding gradually in the remaining four trading days, reaching 364.67 points, at end of the week. 

Except for others subgroup, rest of the subgroups ended up in the red. Others subgroup earned 2.35 points thanks to Nepal Telecom. Hotels that had been posting gains in the last few weeks became biggest loser with a loss of 18.99 points. Commercial banks, development banks, finance companies and insurance companies lost 7.12 points, 5.93 points 3.7 points and 3.48 points, respectively. 

Bank of Kathmandu topped in trading volume with transactions worth Rs 19.5 million. In the number of transactions, Rara Bikas Bank topped with 444 transactions. Citizens Bank International was the forerunner in the number of shares traded with trading of 174,976 unit shares. 

The top five performers of the week were Bank of Kathmandu (Rs 19.5 million), Citizens Bank International (Rs 16.5 million), Chilime Hydropower (Rs 9.5 million), StanChart Bank (Rs 8.94 million) and Everest Bank (Rs 7.11 million).