The share price of the state-controlled bank opened at Rs 534 on Monday. As per provision of the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse), individual stocks are allowed to post a price hike of five percent in the initial trading and two percent each for two successive times. [break]
Based on this, a circuit breaker should have been clamped at Rs 583.35. But the stock closed at Rs 609, up 14 percent than the opening price.
“This is being seen as a technical error, as the system read auction price of shares as the base price for the day,” a Nepse source told Republica.
On Sunday, 1,230 NBL shares were traded on auction with a price of each share fixed at Rs 588.5. Since the price fixed during auctions - called manual trading - are not considered competitive price, the IT system at Nepse avoids this price and sets the opening price based on competitive price reached at the previous closing.
“But on Monday, the system somehow read the auction price as the opening price and stock brokers started placing orders based on it,” the source said.
Nepse said it is still conducting investigation into the case and has not ruled out possibility of human error.
“We will know more only when the market opens on Wednesday (as Tuesday is a public holiday),” the source said. “Meanwhile, we will be canceling the stock transaction of the bank that took place on Monday.”
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