Market guru mouths mantra

Are you planning to buy shares? If yes, wait a while and don't invest in haste. Before taking any decision to buy shares of a particular company it is always wise to go through the companies', past and present financial performance.

Securities Research Centre and Services (SRCS) has brought out a book — Financial Indicators — that can give you the appraisal of the financial performance over the past five years of financial institutions.

Editor of the book, Rabindra Bhattarai, who is also a lecturer and capital market analyst, has compiled most of all the financial reports available of companies and wrought it into a book for investors' benefit.

The book has indicators of all those financial institutions that are the market leaders. Had there been the indicators of all the listed companies, the book would have been really a mirror of the Nepali capital market. It would have been even more useful for investors and researchers.

However, any shortcoming is not Bhattarai's fault as the listed companies, except for financial institutions, are not transparent and rarely publish their financial reports like financial institutions. Thus, our capital market is financial institutions-dominated and does not reflect our economy.

The new listing regulation is bringing a strict rule about providing financial details of all listed companies every three months to make things transparent. Hopefully, the editor will be able to add them in the next edition.

In any case, the book is the first of its kind and should have been published by the Nepal Stock Exchange Ltd (Nepse) or the Securities Board of Nepal (Sebon).

Every two rupees from the sale of each book will go to the school — Narayani Madhyamik Bidhyalaya at Sanghu VDC in Taplejung district — where the author was educated.