Supply pressure pulls Nepse down

The secondary market added a supply of 12.389 million-unit of shares this week as four financial institutions -- Biratlaxmi Bikas Bank, United Finance, Sanima Bikas Bank and Standard Finance -- have listed their bonus and rights shares for trading.
Over-supply of shares and low investor confidence have been pulling Nepse down over the recent weeks. This week too, Nespe dropped by 7.38 points to 709.82 points from Sunday morning's opening of 717.20 points.
The 78-scrip sensitive index -- considered blue chip shares - also lost a marginal 1.93 points to drop to 190.37 points from Sunday's opening of 192.30 points. Similarly, the float index -- calculated on the basis of real transactions -- lost by a mere 0.79 point to drop to 68.58 points from Sunday's opening of 69.37 points.
The transaction amount for this week increased by 63.50 per cent to Rs 636.5 million from last week's 389.3 million. The Group-A companies contribution to the total transactions also increased to 67.13 per cent from last week's 57.62 per cent.
Except others' sub-group -- hydropower, development banks, insurance and commercial bank's sub-groups -- all the major market propellers lost this week. The hydropower companies sub-group lost a whopping 78.19 points and plunged to 877.62 points from Sunday morning's opening of 955.81 points.
The development banks sub-group also lost 11.47 points to 720.76 points, commercial banks lost 7.52 points to 754.61 points and insurance sub-group lost 6.82 points to 641.81 points.
The manufacturing, trading and hotels sub-groups -- of the nine sub-groups -- did not see any transaction this week but others' sub-group gained 4.70 points to 663.81 points. The secondary market this week began in the green on the first day but it steadily dropped on the other four days -- over the five days trading. This week's top performer was Standard Chartered bank Nepal with transactions worth Rs 99.35 million, followed by Nabil Bank (with Rs 63.17 million), Bank of Kathmandu (with Rs 58.35 million), Kist Bank (with Rs 46.24 million) and Citizens' Bank International (with Rs 44.46 million).
In terms of number of shares traded, National Hydropower company topped the chart with 2,14,000-unit shares traded in the week whereas in terms of number of transactions Citizens' Bank International topped the chart with 886 transactions this week.

PM visits BSE
KATHMANDU: Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal visited Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Friday during his five-day visit to India. He observed how BSE operates and tried to understand the secondary market operations. However, whether his gesture will have any effect in boosting the confidence of investors here is yet to be seen as the domestic secondary market is not performing at its best lately.