Nepse down, investor confidence low

Two finance companies had a field day in the secondary market this week even though the finance company group lost 3.53 points to end up at 792.55 points.
Capital Merchant Banking and Finance's 2,10,000-unit shares changed hands as it topped the chart in terms of share units traded, whereas in terms of number of transactions Prabhu Finance topped the chart with 554 transactions for this week.
Low investor confidence and poor performance of key players pulled the Nepse index down by 3.48 points to close at 667.20 points.
Except development banks, hydropower and insurance companies groups, other major groups -- commercial banks, trading and finance companies -- lost this week too.
The development bank group gained 7.92 points to reach 958.09 points from the opening of Sunday. Hydropower group surged by 7.01 points to reach 838.07 points and insurance companies group gained 1.05 points to reach 681.47 points from the Sunday's opening.
However, the trading group plunged by 8.14 points to drop to 213.82 points. Commercial banks group lost 5.93 points to drop to 656.82 points. Finance companies group lost 3.53 points to drop to 792.55 points and the others group -- that has the largest scrips of Nepal Telecom -- lost 2.35 points to drop to 637.97 points from the opening on Sunday.
Of the nine-sub group indices, hotels and manufacturing groups did not see any trading of their scrips this week.
This week's top performers were Capital Merchant Banking and Finance (with Rs 42.84 million), Standard Chartered Bank Nepal (with Rs 19.61 million), Siddhartha Development Bank (with Rs 18.58 million), Bank of Kathmandu (with Rs 16.39 million) and Kumari Bank (with Rs 12.91 million).
The capital market this week saw trading only for four days due to the Holi holiday on Tuesday. Nepse began in the green with a 0.67 point gain on Sunday to close the first day at 671.35 points from the opening 670.68 points. The second day also, it witnessed growth, albeit marginal, by 0.09 point to close at 671.44 points. The third day, on Wednesday, Nepse lost 1.21 points to close the day's trading at 670.23 points. The last day for this week, Thursday, saw a further drop by 3.03 points to close trading at 667.20 points.
The 78-scrip sensitive index -- considered blue chip shares - lost a marginal 0.67 point to drop to 176.90 points from Sunday's opening of 177.78 points. Similarly, the float index -- calculated on the basis of real transactions -- also lost by a mere 0.45 point to drop to 65.31 points from Sunday's opening of 65.76 points.
The transaction amount for this week decreased by 1.86 per cent to drop to Rs 276.25 million from last week's 281.48 million. Group-A companies also lost their dominance in the total transaction as they contributed 48.53 per cent against 66.83 per cent last week.
This week only 50,000-unit bonus shares of Narayani Development Bank were listed at Nepse that had listed over seven million units of shares last week. Over-flooding of shares and low investor confidence pulled the sole secondary market index down, according to market analysts.