NEPSE Markets Daily Recap August 10, 2026: Two hydro carried a fifth of the market

Markets Today

NEPSE opened at 2,651.46, poked at 2,653.96 in the first leg, and spent the rest of the session grinding lower to 2,636.29 before closing at 2,641.06 down 9.02 points (‑0.34%), and only 4.77 points off the day's low. Third consecutive down session.

The level matters more than the move. Friday's intraday low was 2,641.93, and Friday's report flagged it as the nearest support. Today the index traded through it, spent the afternoon below it, and closed there. What was support on Friday is now the ceiling of today's range.

Breadth stayed one-sided but slightly less extreme than Friday: 220 declined against 112 advanced, 20 unchanged, 352 scripts traded. That's an advance/decline of 0.51 versus Friday's 0.54 no improvement, just a wider tape as more scripts got dragged in.

The single cleanest read on the day: of 22 commercial banks traded, zero closed higher. Seventeen fell, five were unchanged. A whole sector with no bid at all is a stronger signal than the Banking sub-index's ‑0.72% suggests.

Turnover came in at Rs 3.67 arab, down 2.6% from Friday's Rs 3.77 arab but transactions jumped 14.1% to 53,524 and volume rose 6.3% to 1.10 crore units. Same money, far more tickets. The average trade fell from Rs 80,448 to Rs 68,650, a 14.7% drop in ticket size in one session. Friday's report called it "retail is churning; size is sitting out." Today that got more pronounced, not less.

Market capitalisation slipped to Rs 4.54 trillion.

Index Snapshot

Turnover Rs 3.67 arab (‑2.63% DoD) · Volume 1.10 crore units (+6.33%) · Transactions 53,524 (+14.09%) · Scripts traded 352 · Market cap Rs 4.54 trillion

Sensitive underperformed NEPSE by 13bps, and Sensitive Float by 12bps. Second straight session where large caps are the drag, not the support consistent with the commercial bank read above.

Sectoral Indices Performance

Nine of thirteen sectors closed red. Sector turnover sums to 95.0% of the market total; the missing 5% is debentures, promoter shares and government bonds, which sit outside the sub-indices.

Hydropower is the story again, and the index is lying about it. The sector took 48.0% of all turnover (down from 52.9% Friday, so participation is rotating out slowly) and closed +0.07%, essentially flat. But underneath: 110 hydro names traded, 72 fell, only 33 rose. The sector index is green because SOHL (+3.34%) and RIDI (+2.93%) between them absorbed Rs 75.65 crore — 41% of all hydro turnover and 20.6% of the entire market. Strip those two out and hydropower is a sector where two-thirds of names lost money.

Manufacturing & Processing bounced a second day (+0.12% after +0.25% Friday), but on 7 up / 7 down / 1 unchanged across just 15 traded scripts. That is not a sector move; it is RSML and SAIL.

Microfinance was the only sector with anything resembling genuine breadth: 23 up, 24 down, and it still finished the best performer. Marginal, but it's the one place buyers showed up without a single name doing the work.

Market Breadth

A/D ratio 0.51. No circuits either way for a second session: orderly distribution, not capitulation. 33 scripts fell more than 2%; 22 rose more than 2%. Median move across the tape: ‑0.35%.

Winners & Losers

Top Gainers

Unlike Friday's list four mutual fund units riding NAV discounts, today's top of the board is carried by real balance sheets on real volume. Corporate Development Bank (CORBL) at +8.47% on Rs 7.65 crore and 1,332 transactions, and First Micro Finance (FMDBL) at +4.61% on Rs 12.45 crore, are the two names where the buying was both large and broad. Treat SIGS3, NSY and CIZBD90 as noise: 6, 33 and 5 transactions respectively.

Top Losers

* RSY2 is not a real loser. Reliable Samriddhi Yojana‑2 has no previous close, this is its first traded session. The ‑9.70% is measured against the Rs 10 issue reference, not a market price. Ignore it.

The reversal trade did it again. Friday's biggest gainer was Aatmanirbhar Laghubitta (ANLB) at +8.60%, closing at 5,999. Today it is the worst genuine loser at ‑8.87%, closing 5,467 after a 5,311.80–5,819.10 range a 9.5% intraday swing on a five-thousand-rupee counter. That is the third session running where the top of Friday's board becomes the bottom of Monday's.

Everest Colour (ECL) is the same pattern with more people in it: +3.29% Friday, ‑4.86% today, on Rs 5.94 crore and 1,513 transactions, the fourth-highest transaction count on the board. The post-listing run has now given back more in one session than it gained in the prior two.

Bhujung Hydropower (BJHL) at ‑3.46% is the one decline with a named cause: the lock-in on 145,975 units held by mutual funds expires Shrawan 26. The market is front-running the supply.

And a correction worth flagging: Upper Lohore Khola (ULHC), which Friday's live feed had at ‑11.10%, actually settled at ‑6.93% for the session. Today it closed +0.18% at 379.70 on Rs 0.77 crore. The crash stopped; it did not reverse.

Turnover & Volume Leaders

Concentration is the number to watch here. SOHL alone is 12.6% of the day's turnover; SOHL plus RIDI is 20.6%; the top ten names are 38.8% and the top twenty are 52.5%. Half the market's money went into twenty scripts out of 352 traded. On a falling index, that is not depth — it is a handful of crowded trades and a lot of empty tape.

RIDI has now been a top-three turnover name for three straight sessions and finally moved with the money, closing +2.93% after trading 360.00–391.30. That is the first session where the two-day accumulation actually produced a price.

Most transacted: SOHL (4,287), SGHL (2,582), KAHL (1,555), ECL (1,513), RIDI (1,352), CORBL (1,332), TPKHL (1,281). Six of the seven are mid-priced hydropower — the retail footprint is unchanged from Friday, just heavier.

Note SGHL: 2,582 transactions for only Rs 2.39 crore of turnover — an average ticket of about Rs 9,300. That is the smallest meaningful ticket size on the board and a clean picture of what is actually trading this market.

Previous Session Recap: Friday, 7 August

NEPSE closed at 2,650.08, down 4.05 points (‑0.15%), on the official print. Turnover was Rs 3.77 arab across 46,912 transactions and 1.03 crore units; 334 scripts traded, 111 advanced, 205 declined, 18 unchanged. Twelve of thirteen sectors were red on the intraday tape but the official close showed Manufacturing & Processing recovering +0.25% and Hydropower taking 52.9% of turnover on a ‑0.13% move.

Two corrections to Friday's live-feed figures now that the settled numbers are out: ANLB closed +8.60% (not ‑3.78%), making it the day's top gainer rather than a loser, and ULHC closed ‑6.93% (not ‑11.10%). The intraday snapshots lagged the close by a wide margin on both. ECL at +3.29% was accurate.

Weekly context: NEPSE fell 35 points over the week to 7 August, with weekly turnover of Rs 21.45 arab, down 1.02% week-on-week, and market capitalisation falling 1.52% to about Rs 4.55 trillion. Eleven of thirteen sub-indices closed the week lower, with Manufacturing & Processing (‑2.49%), Others (‑2.10%) and Banking (‑2.06%) the worst. Today's close takes the index another 9 points below that, and market cap to Rs 4.54 trillion.

Top Stories in Nepal

• Nepal Rastra Bank moves against short-term trading and speculation. The central bank has introduced restrictions targeting speculative short-horizon activity. In a market where the average ticket just fell 15% in a session and 52% of turnover sits in twenty names, this lands directly on the marginal participant. Watch turnover, not the index, for the effect.

• SEBON's primary-market reform task force convenes. The committee's remit covers IPO allocation, book-building, pricing, anchor and institutional investors, digital IPO systems, eligibility criteria and post-issue monitoring. Combined with last week's short-selling signal from the SEBON chair, the regulator is now consulting on both ends of the market structure at once.

• IPO pipeline thickens. Prabhu Life Insurance is at issue, with prospects of a lottery even for a 10-unit application. Greenply Nepal will issue 16.40 lakh shares. Gumukhola Bhyakure Hydropower has appointed RBB Merchant Banking as issue and sales manager.

• Right-share supply queued. NIC Asia Bank and Chandragiri Hills right shares have entered the SEBON pipeline. Bonus shares of Nepal Life Insurance have listed on NEPSE.

• Promoter share sales opened. Kumari Bank (320,948 units), Swarojgar Laghubitta (45,772 units) and Lumbini Bikas Bank (26,978 units) are all selling promoter shares to existing promoter shareholders.

• Reliable Samriddhi Yojana‑2 units listed and traded for the first time today, closing at 9.03.

• Q4 provisional results published by Panchthar Power, Makar Jitumaya Suri Hydropower and Union Hydro Holding.

Corporate Actions & Events

BJHL already sold off 3.46% today ahead of its expiry. RNLI's Shrawan 30 lock-in is the next one on the calendar, and it closed ‑0.18%, the market has not started pricing it yet.

What to Watch

2,636.29 is the new floor to defend. Friday's low at 2,641.93 broke today and the index closed below it. The next reference is the 2,632.96 close from late Ashad. On the upside, 2,653.96 is today's high and 2,676.40 remains the level that has to break to question the downtrend that is now 35 points away, not 26.

Commercial banks: zero gainers out of 22. This is the tell. NEPSE is capitalisation-weighted and banks are the weight. A sector with no bid at all cannot be offset indefinitely by two hydro names taking a fifth of the turnover. If banks post a green session on rising volume, the index follows; if the zero-gainer print repeats tomorrow, the 2,632 level goes.

Hydropower's turnover share fell from 52.9% to 48.0% but nothing received it. Manufacturing took 9.7%, Banking 9.1%, Development Banks 8.3%; none of them is absorbing rotation, they are just the next-largest sectors. Money is leaving hydro and leaving the market, not rotating within it. That fits the falling average ticket.

Concentration at 52.5% in the top twenty. Watch whether SOHL and RIDI hold their bids. Those two are 20.6% of the market's daily turnover; if either rolls over, the hydro sub-index goes negative immediately and takes the headline number with it, because 72 of 110 hydro names are already falling underneath them.

Turnover trend: 4.62 → 3.77 → 3.67 arab. Third consecutive decline, and the smallest one, the rate of contraction is slowing. But transactions rose 14% while turnover fell, so the composition is deteriorating even as the headline stabilises. Participation is not drying up; it is getting smaller. Those are different problems and the NRB's new speculation restrictions act on the second one.