Nepse loses 5% to close at 875.76 level.

Trading at Nepal Stock Exchange Limited (Nepse), the only secondary market of the country was halted for the day after the benchmark index shed staggering 5 percent -- after a several years -- to close at 875.76 level.

Despite repeated moves of the government and regulator that there aren’t any serious reasons for the market to fall at this time, the market has been on a downward spiral for the past few weeks. Today’s loss was the heighted one.

Trading was first halted for half an hour at 1:43 pm after the benchmark index fell by a whopping 4.02 percent to stand at 884.64 level, below the psychological 900 levels. Soon after the market resumed the market further declined to hit the 5 percent lower circuit breaker to close for the day at 2:57 minutes – just three minutes before the market normally closes.

All the sub-indices lost significantly today though the market volume was encouraging as it stood at Rs 50.17 crore, indicating that many buyers, including the big ones, are very much in the game.

The Banking group, which covers around 80 percent of the total market capitalization, shed 52.59 points, Hotels lost 35.38 points, Development Bank 16.59, Hydropower 170.15 points, Finance 13.2 points, Insurance 161.97 points, Manufacturing 0.68 points and the Others group lost 17.62 points.- SSN