Market's Today

The 30-Second Read

• NEPSE closed 2,542.77, up 4.66 (+0.18%) a third consecutive gain, the first three-day run of the entire coverage. But the size is collapsing: +9.24, +15.44, +4.66.

• Breadth halved. A/D fell from 2.57 to 1.18 (145 up, 123 down). Still above parity for a third straight session also a first but the internals decayed faster than the index.

• The rotation died exactly on schedule. Hydropower led yesterday at +0.95%; today it was −0.23% and RHPL, RIDI, SMHL, SOHL, AKJCL and CHCL all fell. That is failed rotation number fifteen and it failed on day three again.

• Six of yesterday's top ten gainers are in today's top ten losers: ANLB, CFCL, SPL, MMKJL, RHPL, MKJC. This is a one-session churn market not a recovery.

• Institutional size is back and it is not subtle. RSML printed Rs 8.10 crore at 11:01 AM plus a second Rs 1.70 crore block; MEN took Rs 2.98 crore. Two blocks above Rs 2 crore in one session after two sessions with nothing above Rs 1 crore. Average deal size Rs 85,606, a third consecutive rise.

• Turnover recovered to Rs 3.47 arab, up 18%. Volume jumped 68% to 1.22 crore units but that is mutual fund units not equity. See the volume trap below.

Three up days. The index has not managed that once in this coverage. It managed it today by 4.66 points and almost everything underneath it got worse.

NEPSE closed at 2,542.77, up 0.18% on Rs 3.47 arab turnover, 1.22 crore units and 40,692 transactions across 346 scrips. Advancers 145, decliners 123, unchanged 14, an A/D ratio of 1.18, down from yesterday's record 2.57.

Look at the sequence rather than the level. Over three sessions the index has added +9.24, +15.44, +4.66 while breadth has run 2.15, 2.57, 1.18. The move is decelerating and the participation behind it is decaying. Eight sub-indices closed green, four red, one not captured against eleven green and two red yesterday.

Hydropower, which led yesterday's rally at +0.95%, closed −0.23%. RHPL −3.19%, RIDI −2.27%, SMHL −2.04%, CHCL −1.80%, SOHL −1.24%, AKJCL −1.16%, TAMOR −0.20%. Six of the ten most-traded names by turnover are hydropower and most of them fell. Failed rotation fifteen, dead on day three, the same day every rotation has died since before 7 August.

The churn is the story. Six of yesterday's ten top gainers appear in today's ten worst losers: ANLB (+10.10% → −6.10%), CFCL (+9.11% → −5.76%), SPL (+4.08% → −3.61%), MMKJL (+10.23% → −3.28%), RHPL (+5.99% → −3.19%), MKJC (+4.39% → −2.49%). Only ULBSL (+4.87%) and MKHC (+7.84%) extended. GBIME went flat at +0.04%.

What went up instead was Investment (+1.26%) and Trading (+1.09%), the two smallest and least-followed sub-indices on the board, plus a microfinance table that produced three of the top four gainers and three of the top four losers on the same day.

The one genuine improvement is money. Turnover of Rs 3.47 arab is up 18% from Monday's coverage low and it is the first reading above Rs 3 arab in three sessions. Combined with the block tape, that is the strongest evidence in weeks that something other than retail churn is participating.

Index Snapshot

Turnover Rs 3.47 arab
Volume 1.22 crore units
Transactions 40,692
Scrips traded 346

Sectoral Indices Performance

8 up, 4 down, 1 not captured. Float (174.35) is a broad index not a sub-index and sits in the Index Snapshot above.

Others (−0.36%) is a one-stock index today. PURE fell −13.33%, the single worst decline of the entire coverage and dragged the sub-index red despite MKCL +4.64%, TTL +0.16%, HRL +0.17% and NRIC −0.74%. Do not read Others as a sector signal.

Finance (−0.34%) is also one stock. CFCL fell −5.76% after rising 9.11% yesterday. The rest of the sector barely moved.

Market Breadth

Running A/D series (7 Aug → 3 Sep): 0.32 → 0.51 → 0.99 → 0.70 → 1.66 → 0.67 → 0.35 → 0.32 → 0.79 → 1.01 → 0.36 → 0.21 → 0.42 → 0.09 → 1.24 → 0.08 → 2.15 → 2.57 → 1.18

Three consecutive above-parity readings, a coverage first. The old rule was that no above-parity A/D survived a single day; it has now survived two. But the trajectory is 2.57 → 1.18, a 54% decay in one session and 1.18 is barely above the 1.00 line. A fourth day is possible; a strong fourth day looks unlikely on this slope.

Technical scan

The Live Indicator Scan at 2:58 PM read 3,242 total signals: 695 bullish (21.44%) and 1,250 bearish (38.56%).

Running bullish %: 24.86 → 25.24 → 24.92 → 25.45 → 22.27 → 22.66 → 21.41 → 20.27 → 19.71 → 20.09 → 18.98 → 19.62 → 21.44

Second consecutive rise, and the highest reading since 14 August. Bullish signals are up 2.46 percentage points from Monday's record low of 18.98%, a 13% relative improvement in two sessions. Bearish signals are essentially unchanged at 38.56% versus 38.34%.

So the scan is repairing while breadth deteriorates, the exact inverse of the divergence that has appeared four times before. In every prior instance the scan was the leading side and breadth followed within a session. If that holds, it argues the index grinds higher on narrowing participation rather than rolling over. The scan is 3-for-4 after failing on Tuesday, so this is a lean, not a call.

Winners & Losers

Top Gainers

Signal quality: only RSML appears in an activity table, and it is there because of its own block (see below). The other nine gainers are absent from both the volume and turnover top tens. ALBSL at Rs 1,190, ULBSL at Rs 2,926 and CIT at Rs 1,719.90 can move this much on a handful of trades.

MKHC and ULBSL are the only two names that have now held two consecutive sessions: MKHC +5.93% then +7.84%, ULBSL +11.87% then +4.87%. Both are thin. Watch whether either survives a third day; nothing else in this market has.

Top Losers

PURE's −13.33% is the largest single-name decline of the coverage. Five of the ten losers are hydropower, confirming the sector reversal.

RHPL at 173.10 is now −28.29% from its 241.40 pre-flood level having given back most of yesterday's +5.99%. It remains the name to watch on any restoration announcement and there is still no published timeline.

No debentures in either table for a second consecutive session. Nothing needed excluding.

Turnover & Volume Leaders

Most Active by Turnover

Most Active by Volume

AKJCL (340.30, −1.16%), RIDI (344.00, −2.27%), TAMOR (503.00, −0.20%), GBBL (436.30, +2.42%), SOHL (654.80, −1.24%), SHIVM (661.00, +0.46%), SMHL (527.00, −2.04%), MEN (629.00, +1.16%), KBL (213.00, +0.09%), GBIME (250.00, +0.04%)

Eight of the ten turnover leaders are the same names as yesterday. The difference is direction: yesterday seven of ten were green, today six of ten are red. The money is in the same places and it is now selling.

Block tape

Top 5 by amount: RSML Rs 8.10 Cr (49.92%), MEN Rs 2.98 Cr (18.37%), SBI Rs 1.78 Cr (10.98%), RSML Rs 1.70 Cr (10.47%), UMHL Rs 1.67 Cr (10.26%). Combined Rs 16.23 crore up from Rs 8.76 crore.

Top 5 by quantity: H8020 4,95,405, SEF 2,00,000, H8020 2,00,000, NSIF2 1,98,800, H8020 1,00,000.

Institutional size has returned properly. Two sessions ago the largest block was Rs 76.06 lakh. Today there are two blocks above Rs 2 crore in the same session, the marker we set as confirmation and RSML's Rs 8.10 crore is the second-largest single print of the entire coverage behind only the ADBLB87 debenture placement at Rs 10.15 crore.

Running largest-block series: ADBLB87 Rs 10.15 Cr → RSML Rs 5.44 Cr → SBI Rs 4.03 Cr → TAMOR Rs 95.30 L → SOHL Rs 76.06 L → SAHAS Rs 4.95 Cr → RSML Rs 8.10 Cr

Average deal size has now risen three sessions running: Rs 53,605 → 59,442 → 74,087 → 85,606, the highest since 20 August.

But note the character difference from yesterday. SAHAS's Rs 4.95 crore cross moved the price +0.48%, a negotiated placement. RSML's Rs 9.80 crore across two blocks came with a +5.01% move and put the stock top of the turnover table. That is size buying, not size transferring. RSML is also a repeat block name it took Rs 31.53 crore in a single session earlier in the coverage and held a prior largest-block record at Rs 5.44 crore. SBI returns too, with Rs 1.78 crore after its four identical Rs 4.03 crore prints earlier.

The volume trap

Traded volume jumped 68% to 1.22 crore units while turnover rose only 18%. That gap is not equity demand.

The three largest quantity prints are all H8020 totalling 795,405 units with SEF (200,000) and NSIF2 (198,800) behind them. These are mutual fund units trading near Rs 10 not shares. Roughly 1.19 million of the day's units came from five mutual fund prints alone, contributing almost nothing to turnover.

The likely cause is same-day: Himalayan Capital 80-20 declared a 15% cash dividend worth Rs 15 crore, and H8020 is the plausible ticker. Treat the identification as inference, not confirmed.

Practical read: today's volume figure overstates equity activity. Use turnover (Rs 3.47 arab) and transaction count (40,692, up only 2.6%) as the participation measure.

Turnover integrity check: the top five blocks total Rs 16.23 crore, or 4.7% of Rs 3.47 arab. RSML alone is 2.8%. Material but not distorting, headline turnover stands and stripping RSML out still leaves roughly Rs 3.37 arab, comfortably above Monday's low.

Previous Session Recap

Wednesday, 2 September, NEPSE rose 15.44 points to 2,538.11 on Rs 2.94 arab with an A/D of 2.57, the coverage record. Hydropower led at +0.95%. SAHAS printed a Rs 4.95 crore single cross. The Nepal Insurance Authority published Rs 25.87 billion of preliminary flood claims and the Non-Life sector sorted itself precisely by claim exposure. GBIME rose 4.13% on a 10% dividend announcement. Trishuli Jal Vidyut disclosed the total loss of Upper Trishuli-3 'B'.

Coverage index series (7 Aug → 3 Sep, 20 sessions): 2,650.08 → 2,641.06 → 2,641.85 → 2,642.40 → 2,651.21 → 2,643.83 → 2,641.82 → 2,622.48 → 2,622.22 → 2,629.40 → 2,618.72 → 2,599.58 → 2,594.27 → 2,558.35 → 2,557.31 → 2,513.42 → 2,522.66 → 2,538.11 → 2,542.77

Net across the coverage: −107.31 points, −4.05%. The market has recovered 29.35 points, or 23% of the drawdown, in three sessions.

Signal Scorecard: what resolved today

The Non-Life sort inverted

Five of six flipped sign. Yesterday's clean exposure-ranked sort was a single-session reaction that has now been fully reversed. The correct read is that this market prices a headline for one day and then reverts, in insurance exactly as in everything else. I called it "the most precise price discovery in the dataset" yesterday. It was precise for one session and then it was noise. That is worth stating plainly.

Top Stories in Nepal

1. The damage is Rs 180 billion. The insurance claim is Rs 25.87 billion.

The Ministry of Finance, Nepal Insurance Authority, insurers, reinsurers and surveyors agreed that insurance companies will make advance payments against verified Bhotekoshi flood claims, rather than waiting for full assessment. The precedent is the September 2025 Gen-Z movement when insurers advanced up to 50% of confirmed claims.

Buried in the same report is the number that matters most so far: hydropower projects in the Bhotekoshi region totalling roughly 900 MW have suffered losses estimated at around NPR 180 billion in investment value. Against that, 583 claims worth NPR 25.87 billion have been filed.

Do the subtraction. The claims filed represent about 14% of the estimated investment loss. Whatever the eventual reconciliation: underinsurance, replacement-cost versus investment-value accounting, claims still to be filed, or genuinely uninsured assets roughly Rs 154 billion of destroyed value currently has no insurance claim attached to it. That residual does not sit with insurers. It sits with project sponsors, their lenders and their equity holders.

For scale: Rs 180 billion is larger than the entire Rs 166.50 billion margin-lending book, and roughly 1.6 times the Rs 115 billion banks committed to Tila-1 and Tila-2 in a single week.

The Authority will also deploy surveyors, simplify documentation, possibly bring in foreign experts for complex claims, and run a special task force to monitor claims, coordinate company liquidity and accelerate reinsurance reimbursement.

Why it matters, two ways. For insurers, advance payments convert a slow, staged liability into an immediate cash outflow which is why the Authority is explicitly coordinating "company liquidity" but they also cap uncertainty and let the sector move past the overhang. That is arguably why Non-Life stopped selling today. For hydropower, advance cash is genuinely good news: it lets repair begin. But the Rs 180 billion figure reframes the whole flood. The market has been treating this as an insurance event. It is mostly not an insurance event; it is an equity and credit event with an insurance component covering about a seventh of it.

2. Himalayan Reinsurance loses its chairman and the timing is the story

Uday Kumar Niroula has resigned as Chairman of Himalayan Reinsurance and from the board entirely, citing personal reasons. He submitted the letter on Shrawan 29 (14 August) and the 89th board meeting accepted it on Bhadra 10, 26 August, the day of the flood. It was disclosed publicly on 3 September, eight days later. The chairman's seat is now vacant.

Context matters here. Niroula had held the role roughly five months, appointed in Chaitra after his predecessor Shekhar Golchha resigned and several board members were linked to money-laundering investigations. Four directors resigned in the earlier reshuffle. HRL officials and board members have been under investigation by the Department of Money Laundering Investigation and the CIB.

Why it matters: HRL is the reinsurance layer beneath every primary insurer now writing advance cheques. It reported a Rs 2.33 billion FY2082/83 loss with its catastrophe reserve depleted 27% to Rs 144.4 million against Rs 25.87 billion of gross claims. The Insurance Authority is simultaneously trying to "accelerate reinsurance reimbursements." A vacant chair and a governance history of serial resignations is not what you want at the top of that entity in this particular week. HRL closed +0.17%; the market has not engaged with this.

3. Salt Trading becomes the supply-chain workaround and Trading was the second-best sector

Salt Trading Corporation (STC) has started filling STC-branded LPG cylinders at private bottling plants including Manoj Gas and Baba Gas, after the Prithvi Highway closure at Krishnabhir cut its Jugekhola plant off from gas bullets. Filled cylinders are being routed to Kathmandu by alternative roads, with the first batch due Friday.

The constraint is allocation, not logistics: NOC receives 3,025 bullets from Indian Oil, of which around 53 about 2%, go to Salt Trading against monthly consumption of 55,000–60,000 STC cylinders. It is running a coupon system with fixed collection dates.

On the other commodities: 127,361 metric tons of iodized salt in warehouse as of 2 September against national demand above 200,000 tons annually; and it is selling sugar at Rs 100/kg while private sellers charge up to Rs 135, having imported 600 tons on Bhadra 9 and released another 3,000 tons.

Why it matters: the Trading sub-index closed +1.09%, second-best on the board, with STC +0.24% and BBC +1.19%. This connects to yesterday's supply-chain thread and note NOC has stopped supplying LPG to commercial users through Kathmandu Valley depots, forcing hotels, restaurants and industries to source from outside the Valley. Watch CITY (−1.36% today), TRH (−1.13%) and SHL for cost pressure into the festival quarter.

4. ICRA active again, two upgrades

Chandika Distillery's long- and short-term loan ratings were upgraded, supported by guaranteed sales to sister company Yeti Distillery and stronger promoter alignment. IME Motors was upgraded to [ICRANP] LB+ from LB- on stronger capitalisation, profitability and debt-servicing capacity. Separately, Aashutosh Energy retained its BBB- issuer rating (2 September).

Why it matters: we flagged the credit chain as the template: damage, force majeure, unquantified claim, downgrade after Myagdi Hydropower was cut to [ICRANP-IR] B@. Today's actions are a reminder that ICRA is moving in both directions and that the agency is currently the most active source of company-specific hard information in this market. The name to watch remains Trishuli Jal Vidyut, which disclosed the total loss of Upper Trishuli-3 'B' yesterday. MHL took roughly ten days from event to downgrade.

5. Sopan Pharmaceuticals: profit down 82%

Sopan Pharmaceuticals reported net profit of Rs 38.28 million in FY2082/83, an 82% decline despite operating revenue rising 2.18%. Revenue held; margins collapsed.

Why it matters: it is the fourth consecutive earnings disclosure of the coverage that the tape ignored entirely. Three banks with double-digit profit growth, a 97% finance-sector Q4 jump, and now an 82% profit collapse, none of it moved anything. Only dividends move this market, and as GBIME demonstrated today, they move it for exactly one session.

6. Power restoration

Electricity has been restored to around 90% of Nuwakot, with 31 additional transformers returned to service. This is distribution recovery, not generation twelve hydropower projects remain offline and exports are still running around 650 MW against a normal 1,000 MW. No restoration timeline has been published for RHPL and none for the 220 kV Trishuli-3 'B' hub substation.

Corporate Actions & Events