Repeated warning from Nepal Rastra Bank and trade analysts that the bullish trend seen at the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) from the past some months was ‘unjustified rise’ and that it had overheated due to ‘rumour-driven trend’ and possible manipulation in share prices of commercial banks seems to have finally worked as the stock market saw a massive slow-down in its growth, gaining only 0.18 points this week.

The Nepse index opened at 687.65 points at the beginning of the week and ended at 687.83 points on Thursday, the last day of trading. According to trade analysts, the same commercial banks which had contributed towards skyrocketing share prices had pulled the index down.

The weekly turnover stood at Rs 392.4 million with 591,776 units of shares having been traded throughout the week, against last week’s figure of Rs 393.5 million through the trading of 506,943 unit shares.

The group wise share trading analysis shows that commercial banks’ group were the losers while the hotel, hydropower and insurance groups reported strong growth.

The commercial bank group, which was persistently driving the whole stock market up for the past weeks, registered a fall of 5.51 points. The group’s index closed at 774.04 points, down from 779.55 points.

On the other hand, the hydropower group registered an impressive growth of 31.53 points to close at 998.44 points. The group, which had gained a whopping three-digit growth last week, has begun its trading at 966.51 points this week.

Likewise, the insurance group, too, managed a double-digit growth of 23.50 points.