WEEKLY SHARE UPDATE : Nepse index continues to fall Share trading at the Nepal Stock Exchange declined yet another week by 1.22 points, due to a continued fall in prices of commercial banks shares. The trading at the country’s sole secondary market began at 372.06 points on Sunday and closed at 370.84 points on Thursday, the last day of the trading under a regular lot. The Nepse had suffered 3.67 points loss last week and over 13 points a week before that. The leading scrip — commercial banks group — continued to suffer, which led to an overall decline of the index, despite a steady growth by some other groups shares including insurance and finance companies groups. According to Nepse, a total of 539,907 units of shares valued at Rs 81,033,934 were traded through 1,313 transactions during this week. Last week, a total of 1,389,868 units of shares changed hands generating a turnover of Rs 101,998,711 from 1,402 transactions. Out of the 67 listed companies for share trading, only 59 companies saw their transaction this week. The weekly trading report shows that the index of the commercial banks group, which is the largest scrip by volume at the Nepse, dropped by 2.08 points, against last week’s loss of 6.18 points. The index of the group that opened at 422.95 points on Sunday dropped to 420.89 points on the closing day. The hotel group, which posted a marginal growth last week, suffered a loss of 1.91 points this week. The group began trading at 181.14 points and closed at 179.23 points on the last day. On other hand, finance and insurance groups maintained a steady growth, as their indices closed at 254.53 points and 365.75 points respectively on the last day. The finance group’s trading began at 254.25 points on Sunday, while the insurance group opened it’s trading at 364.02 points. The development banks group recovered and registered an impressive growth of 4.74 points against last week’s heavy loss of about 11 points. The group started trading at 270.75 points on Sunday and closed at 275.49 points on Thursday. Manufacturing, other and trading groups, meanwhile, saw no change in their indices and remained constant at 292.34 points, 363.69 points and 148.11 points respectively throughout the week. Of the total transactions during the week, the commercial banks group dominated the Nepse floor by capturing a lion share. The group cornered 94.59 per cent share trading, while finance group’s share comprised 3.44 per cent and insurance group followed by 1.37 per cent. Development banks group was able to capture 0.37 per cent and hotel group had a 0.13 per cent share, while manufacturing group cornered a mere 0.09 per cent of the total trading. In terms of the maximum number of transactions, Siddhartha Bank topped the race this week too, with 320 transactions, while Bank of Kathmandu outshone others in number of share units and value traded during the week. A total of 37,003 share units of the bank were traded at Rs 30,060,443 at the Nepse floor this week. The floor remained open for five days, where the shares of Nabil Bank, Nepal Investment Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Himalayan Bank, Nepal SBI Bank, Nepal Bangladesh Bank, Everest Bank, Bank of Kathmandu, NIC Bank, Machhapuchhre Bank, Kumari Bank, NCC Bank and Siddhartha Bank were traded throughout the week.