KATHMANDU, June 13: The daily turnover at the Nepal Stock Exchange (NEPSE) on Thursday stood at Rs 6.44 billion, the highest in the past five months.

Although NEPSE has not been performing encouragingly in terms of the market index, the trade volume has been escalating over the past few days. According to the stockbrokers, investors are mainly influenced by the approaching fiscal year end along with banks lowering their interest rates in recent days.

On Thursday alone, the traded amount witnessed a single day growth of Rs 550 million, up from Rs 5.89 billion on Wednesday. Earlier the trade volume hit Rs 6.36 billion on January 22.   

Despite posting an impressive turnover, the NEPSE index declined by 9.32 points to close at 2,112.29 points in intraday trading on Thursday. The market opened at 2,121.62 points, went through a series of fluctuations and reached the day’s low at 2,106.91 points before the last 13 minutes of trading. The market recovered around six points in the remaining period before it closed for the day.

The sensitive index that measures the performance of ‘A’ class companies fell 0.72 points.

Only two groups including development bank and finance gained 53.75 points and 45.47 points, respectively. Of the 11 losing groups, the index of non-life insurance dropped by the largest of 88.96 points.

Among individual companies, 93 were recorded as gainers whereas 148 were the losers.

Nepal Finance Ltd had the largest turnover of its shares worth Rs 284.73 million. Mid Solu Hydropower Limited was the biggest loser, while Samriddhi Finance Company gained the highest of 10 percent of its market value.