KATHMANDU, June 27: Continuing bullish trend, the share market crossed the 1,700-point mark on Monday. 

Lack of investment opportunity, lure of rights and bonus shares from banks and financial institutions and insurance companies, coupled with low interest rates offered by banks have fuelled the stock market growth in recent months despite the market regulator repeatedly advising investors to be cautious before putting their hard-earned money in the stock market.

Propelled by the Banking group, the Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) index gained 36.60 points, or 2.17 percent, in the intra-day trading on Monday to close the market at 1,721.77 points.

Except Insurance and Hotels sub-groups, all the other sub-groups logged gains to push the share market upward beyond imagination as the market lacks depth to sustain the bubble.

The Insurance sub-group, which has been instrumental in propelling the benchmark index to record high, shed 95.57 points to close the day's trading at 9384.04 points, whereas the Hotels sub-group also lost 26.19 points to close the day at 1,983.88 points.

Shares of 132 listed companies worth Rs 1.64 billion were traded on Monday, continuing to raise brows of observers as the country's sole bourse has been logging daily transactions worth more than Rs 1 billion in the past couple of weeks.

According to the share market pundits, low supply of shares of insurance companies and micro finance companies has also pushed the market over the roof.

"Apart from the comparably better return than other sectors, the ongoing bullish trend is also attracting other investors to the secondary market," they claimed.

Market capitalization climbed to Rs 1846.92 billion on Monday, which is over 80 percent of the total gross domestic production (GDP).

 
• nepse
 
• shares
 
• nepse index