Market prods lose steam

The popular belief that Group-A companies dominate domestic secondary market was challenged this week. These companies lost lustre. The contribution of Group-A companies to the total trading dropped to 39.87 per cent this week against last week's 73.17 per cent.
However, the total transaction increased by 0.87 per cent to Rs 446.37 million against last week's transaction. A total of 84 companies' scrips were traded at the secondary market this week.
Group-A has 74 companies' -- all market propellers. With the fall in their transaction, they pulled down the total Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index by 11.66 points to dip to 743.25 points this week from last week's closing of 754.91 points. Sensitive index -- a barometer of the group-A companies -- also dropped, albeit by just 1.20 points to dip to 195.47 points. Similarly, the float index - calculated on the basis of real transactions - lost 1.01 points to go to 72.16 points.
This week, commercial banks, hydropower and insurance companies -- the key market propellers -- respectively lost 16.65 points to reach 725.20 points, 26.69 points to reach 923.54 points and 8.47 points to reach 751.22 points. However, the sharholders of development banks, and finance company groups gained this week as the development bank and finance company group index gained by 3.26 points to go up to 1140.54 points and 12.96 points to go up to 993.73 points, respectively.
Shareholders of National Hydropower Company this week gained the most as in terms of monetary value, National Hydropower Company (with Rs 44.11 million), Nepal Bangladesh Bank (with Rs 40.03 million), Butwal Power Company (with Rs 37.01 million), Siddhartha Bank (with Rs 27.96 million) and Nepal Credit and Commerce Bank (with Rs 26.70 million) were top scorers.
The market wound up in negative territory for three days in its four-day session this week Tuesday was a public holiday. The market opened in the red on Sunday and lost 0.62 points to go down to 754.29 points. On Monday, it further lost 6.57 points to slip to 747.72 points. Nepse lost 5.36 points on Wednesday to slump to 742.36 points. However, on Thursday, the last day of the trading in the domestic market, it gained 0.89 points to close at 743.25 points.
In terms of numbers of share units traded, National Hydropower Company topped the chart with 3,06000-unit shares while in terms of number of transactions Biratlaxmi Bikas Bank topped the chart with 811 transactions.
Nepse also published the base price of companies for brokers and investors as there was confusion on how to calculate the capital gain tax. Now, capital gain tax will be calculated on base price published by Nepse, according to the Finance Ministry's recent decision.