KATHMANDU, May 9: Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) on Thursday increased marginally by 5.63 points to close at 1,966.23 points.

The secondary market opened at 1,960.60 points and went through a series of fluctuations to reach the day’s low at 1,955.23 points in two and a half hours of the commencement of trading. In the next moment, the index successively increased and hit the day’s high at 1,970.29 points when 15 minutes of trading time were left. In the remaining period before the market closed for the day, the index shed around four points. 

The sensitive index that measures the performance of ‘A’ class companies also rose 1.19 points. The daily turnover increased to Rs 3.12 billion from Rs 2.54 billion on Wednesday. 

Three groups including life insurance, microfinance, and manufacturing and processing were the losers, with life insurance posting the largest decline of 43.57 points. Of the 10 gainers, hotels and tourism gained the highest of 342.87 points.

Among individual companies, 115 were recorded as gainers whereas 115 were the losers.

Nepal Finance Ltd had the largest turnover of its shares worth Rs 169.71 million. Oriental Hotels Limited gained the highest of 8.46 percent of its market value while Kumari Sabal Yojana lost the highest of 8.48 percent of its market price.