NEPSE's flat close hid a one-sector session

The 0.94-point gain in the NEPSE is not what 27 October tells a trader. What it tells a trader is that nearly all of the day's money went into one sector, and the other twelve did not follow.

The index finished at 2,630.76, up 0.03%, a single session in the green. The Sensitive index lost 0.06% and the Float index 0.05%. Breadth was fractionally negative — 133 advancers against 138 decliners, eight unchanged out of 279 traded. That is a flat tape with a hole in it, and the hole is where everything that was not hydropower traded.

Hydropower took the tape

Rs 3.37 arba of the session's Rs 5.8 arba changed hands in hydropower — 58.2% of turnover — and the sector index rose 1.65%, with 79 names up against 30 down. Total turnover ran 44.9% above Monday's Rs 4 arba and 22.7% above the 20-session median of Rs 4.73 arba across 53,030 trades. The trading was spread rather than stacked: the two busiest names, GHL and PHCL, accounted for only 15.8% of the sector's turnover, and the five most-traded stocks were just 19.5% of the whole market.

Everywhere else leaned the other way

Commercial banks fell 0.37% on Rs 82.5 crore with 19 up and 26 down. Development banks lost 0.45%, life insurance 0.59%, manufacturing 0.5%, hotels 0.51% on one advancer against seven decliners. Finance slipped 0.18%, and 83.5% of that sector's modest Rs 19.27 crore was done in two names. Even inside the winning sector there was a split: MEN fell 15.5% on Rs 10.19 crore while MMKJL added 12.09% and DORDI 6.79% on Rs 7.18 crore.

What the flow said

Market-wide buy-initiated flow was 48.7%, but 65.8% of turnover sat in the names that rose against 33% in those that fell — money was in the names that rose. In hydropower, buy-initiated flow reached 52.7% and the reading is accumulation-style in GHL, TAMOR, GVL, SOHL and SMHL, with buy-initiated flow at 73.6% in DORDI and 75.7% in SMHL. The counterweight is distribution-style in LEC, API, RSML, MAKAR and MFIL, and SADBL read just 15.3% buy-initiated. The largest single print of the day was GVL at Rs 2.37 crore, sell-initiated, and buying faded into the close in GHL, GVL, LEC and HDL.

What would change the picture

Wednesday 28 October brings book closes for MFIL at a 20% dividend, BARUN at 5% and the MFILPNP preference, and opens both HPHL tranches — project-area residents and Nepalis working abroad. The RBBL debenture issue closed today. The condition to watch is breadth: turnover holding above the Rs 4.73 arba median while buy-initiated flow clears 50% in more than one sector. Against that, NEPSE is 11.41% below its 25 March high of 2,969.50, up 1.19% over five sessions and down 0.62% over twenty.