By A Staff Reporter, Kathmandu, Jan. 20: Breaking the increasing trend, the benchmark capital market index NEPSE declined by 26.54 points (1.98 per cent) on Monday.

The NEPSE index which opened at 1343.66 points in the morning slashed to 1,317.11 points at the afternoon when the market closed for today.

Showing an increasing trend for last three days, the index had increased by 80 points.  The NEPSE index has been showing increasing trend with some fluctuations in the last one month.

The sensitive index which measures the performance of group ‘A’ companies also declined by 4.86 points (1.68 per cent) to close at 283.53 points.

In today’s transaction, sub-indices of all groups recorded a decreasing trend.

Despite the decline in NEPSE index, the volume of transaction remained relatively high on Monday’s transaction. The stock exchange traded 5,846,238 unit shares worth Rs. 1.97 billion of 182 companies in 20,446 transactions today.

Analysts have said that the decline in NEPSE index was due to increased supply of shares from investors to book profit after the significant increase in the index in recent days.

Sub-indices of life insurance companies posted the  highest points decline of 154.65 points followed by non-life insurance, manufacturing and hotels whose indices declined by 116.31 points, 71.91 points and 64.09 points respectively.

Similarly, microfinance, trading, development bank and hydropower sub-indices declined by 57.88 points, 54.59 points, 52.87 points and 42.22 points respectively.

Likewise, sub-indices of finance, banking, others and mutual fund declined by 22.33 points, 15.88 points, 13.53 points and 0.18 points respectively.

Panchthar Power Company, Pokhara Finance, Himal Power Partner, Bishal Bazaar Company and Panchakanya Mai Hydropower became top loser in today’s transaction.

Himalayan Distillery, NCC Bank, Nepal Life Insurance Company, Prabhu Bank and NIC Asia Bank became top companies on the basis of turnover on Monday.