Negative investorsentiment caused the country’s sole secondary market to slide 21.43 points or1.6 per cent in the trading week between May 20 and 24.

“Investors are worried aboutinvestment opportunities under the communist government,” said UttamAryal,chairman of Nepal Investors Association.

“While the government did tryto allay investors’ worries through the ‘Policies and Programmes’, investorsare distrustful of the current government, especially as Finance MinisterYubarajKhatiwada had hinted at cracking down on ‘unproductive sectors likeshare market’ earlier.”

He further said that in themeantime, investors are waiting for the budget announcement to get a clearerpicture of the government’s views and plans for the share market.

According to Aryal, thegovernment should also introduce policies to attract the investment ofnon-residential Nepalis (NRN) into the stock market, which would give themarket a definite boost.

The benchmark index remainedsouthbound throughout in the week ahead of the scheduled budget announcement.

The market had opened, withNepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index at 1,339.65 points. It had shed 0.46 pointsto close at 1,339.19 points by the end of the trading day. Nepse fell by 2.06points to 1,337.13 points on Monday, by 4.31 points to 1,332.82 points onTuesday, and by 4.55 points to 1,328.27 points on Wednesday. The local bourseslid by 10.05 points on Thursday to close the week at 1,318.22 points.

Along with Nepse index,sensitive and float indices also fell in the review week.

The sensitive index, whichmeasures the performance of class ‘A’ stocks, was down 4.41 points or 1.56 percent to 277.89 points.

Similarly, the float index thatgauges the performance of shares actually traded also slipped by 1.66 points or1.71 per cent to 95.04 points.

In the review period, only twosubgroups — out of the total 10 — landed in the green zone. Trading andmicrofinance subgroups recorded gains of over one per cent, while the remainingsubgroups witnessed losses between 0.02 per cent and 2.44 per cent.

Trading subgroup inched up by1.47 per cent or 2.96 points to 204.30 points. Likewise, microfinance subgroupascended by 1.21 per cent or 21.06 points to close at 1,754.60 points for theweek.

Conversely, insurance subgroupplunged by 2.44 per cent or 170.05 points to rest at 6,787.90 points. On itsheels, development banks dropped by 2.10 per cent or 32.58 points to land at1,512.64 points.

Banking — the subgroup with thehighest weightage on the share market — descended by 1.99 per cent or 22.93points to 1,124.37 points. Similarly, the hydropower sub-index went down by1.57 per cent or 26 points to 1,629.74 points.

Finance sub-index slipped by0.84 per cent or 5.47 points to 642.20 points, while hotels shed 0.77 per centor 15.32 points to 1,966.69 points.

The others sub-index dipped by0.44 per cent or 3.31 points to rest at 748.16 points and manufacturingsub-index shrank by 0.02 per cent or 0.57 points to rest at 2,318.56 points forthe week.

Altogether 4.13 million sharesof 183 companies worth Rs 1.92 billion were traded through 19,713 transactionsduring the week. The traded amount was 77.71 per cent higher than the totalweekly turnover of the previous week, which was recorded at Rs 1.08 billion. Inthe past week, 2.32 million shares of 176 companies had changed hands through14,026 transactions.

Nepal Investment Bank (PromoterShare) was the forerunner in two categories — weekly turnover and tradingvolume — with 96,000 of its shares changing hands worth Rs 228.50 million.

Swarojgar Laghubitta BittiyaSanstha with Rs 69.97 million, Laxmi Bank with Rs 58.33 million, KalikaMicrocredit Development Bank with Rs 53.68 million and Nepal Bank with Rs 47.71million rounded up the top five listed companies in terms of weekly turnover inthe review period.

Meanwhile, Nepal InvestmentBank topped the chart in terms of number of transactions — 729.

Source: The Himalayan Times,28^th May 2018