The benchmark index, which opened at 436.7 points on Tuesday after 11-day Dashain vacation, surged past 450-point mark by the closing time on Wednesday to reach 451.43 points for the first time since Aug 16, 2010.[break]
But this upbeat sentiment could not continue for long and the index slid back to 447.98 points on Thursday -- the last trading day of the week.
The index made gains over the week partly due to strong performance made by bank stocks. This caused the banking index to rally 20.41 points, or 5.55 percent, over the week to settle at 388.03 points on Thursday.
“Stock prices of banks are rising as investors have started showing renewed interest in them due to reduction in their prices,” Nanda Kishore Mundada, a stock broker, had told Republica earlier this week.
Share prices of banks had started taking a dip after the category ´A´ financial institutions started declaring dividends days ahead of the commencement of the Dashain festival. During this time, most of the investment had gone into shares of insurance and hydropower companies.
“But as stocks of insurance and hydropower companies started becoming expensive, investors have once again turned back to commercial banks,” Mundada said.
The weekly report of Nepse also shows that stock prices of most of the heavyweight banks like Nabil, Standard Chartered and Nepal Investment, have gone up over the week.
Like banking stocks, investors have also showed interest in shares of hydropower and insurance companies which provided additional impetus to the benchmark index.
The weekly Nepse report shows companies like Chilime Hydropower adding Rs 42 to their share value over the week to close at Rs 1,032 on Thursday. Stock prices of Butwal Power Company also gained Rs 25 during the week to end at Rs 795 on Thursday. Among insurance companies, Life Insurance and Nepal Life Insurance added Rs 69 and Rs 30 to their stock values, respectively, to close at Rs 1,294 and Rs 1,325 for the week.
As market sentiment remained upbeat over the week, share trading amount stood at Rs 153.26 million. Although the transaction amount marks a decline of 7.56 percent compared with that of week prior to that, stock analysts expressed satisfaction over the liquidity maintained in the market as share trading extended for only three days this week due to festival holidays as against four in the previous week.
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