Finance

High Earnings Low Effect (September 2011)

October 11, 2011

By Bikram Chitrakar

The Nepali capital market in the month ended on 22 August performed bad as political uncertainty intensified. Therefore, even the healthy earnings reported by the companies for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2010-11 could not lift he market. The benchmark Nepse index lost 15.68 points or 4.45% to settle at 349.85 on August 22. It was at the highest point of 365.43 on 24th July while the lowest point was on 9th August at 345.8

Though the banks and financial institutions published their fourth quarter reports showing good financial performance in the fiscal year 2010-11 that ended on mid-July 2011, this failed to improve the sentiment of the investors. Some commercial banks such as Nabil Bank, Bank of Kathmandu and Everest Bank have already declared dividends. However the strength of such declaration has failed to improve the sentiment of stockholders.

During the review period, International Share market slipped heavily after the rating of United States government's debt was downgraded by S&P. Major Asian, European and US market suffered heavy loss after gloomy economic overview of US and European market. However, Nepal's market was not impacted by this issue as the international market movement has little link with the Nepali bourse.

Political fever once again gripped the investors sentiment as deadline for issuing the new constitution is round the corner while the political parties seem uncertain about how to go ahead with this task. One progress of the month in the parliament was that it passed an Act related to setting up investment board that aims to facilitate foreign investors. However, the capital market is yet to test the results of this new law.

Performance by Sector

The accompanying figure illustrates the sector-wise distribution based on total amount of trade. Commercial banking sector accounted for 52.20% followed by hydropower sector (16.20%) and development bank (15.49%).

Technically, Simple Moving Average (SMA) is dominating the market as both 30 days SMA and 200 days SMA are above the Nepse index. Based on the SMA, the benchmark Nepse is weak

(Chitrakar is a Stock Analyst with Jamb Technologies Pvt Ltd.)

Movement in Indices (24 July - 22 August 2011)

Indices	Open	High	Low	Close	Change	% Change
Nepse	365.42	365.42	345.80	349.85	-15.57	-4.45
Bank	337.13	337.13	310.36	317.27	-19.86	-6.26
Sensitive	90.62	90.62	85.63	85.99	-4.63	-5.38
Development Bank	296.40	296.40	285.92	285.92	-10.48	-3.67
Hydropower	608.36	608.36	553.97	567.37	-40.99	-7.22
Finance	302.26	302.31	290.54	290.54	-11.72	-4.03
Insurance	415.94	422.26	409.45	419.48	3.54	0.84
Hotel	408.07	409.57	387.14	387.14	-20.93	-5.41
Manufacturing	587.34	587.34	587.23	587.23	-0.11	-0.02
Trading	241.97	241.97	241.97	241.97	0.00	0.00
Others	487.61	498.19	475.87	480.57	-7.04	-1.46
Float	31.07	31.07	29.30	29.69	-1.38	-4.65