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 Mr. Market moves in zigzag pat­terns, up and down on a reg­ular basis. Whenever it is on a drive up, many people who have already invested start to calculate the profit in book. They contemplate of what they can do with the unre­alized profit, if they decide to book it. But their temptation to realize the profit is checked by the greed of losing out on any further price appreciation. They browse through the business section of newspapers and online portals on regular basis to find a clue or two on what might happen next, and join discussion forums on social media for the same purpose.

 Unfortunately, they are not full-time traders. While tending to their primary professional obligations, they miss the price movements for a day or two. And then they suddenly notice a big drop in price. They panic and sell their holdings imme­diately. Before giving the sell order, they nonetheless check online news portals and social media groups for any clue on the price decline. The online portals are abuzz with news of short-term traders actively booking their profits. But the social media is also filled with conspiracy theories on how big investors are manipulating the market to bring down the price so that they can buy cheap.

This gives a ray of hope of price stabilizing and moving up again. They decide to stay put and watch the price movement for next few days, which sees further bloodbath on the trading floor. The price con­tinues to decline. Every hope of price stability vanishes in thin air and their losses start to mount. Now, they can wait no more. They push the button to stop any more losses.

The price movement continues going south; they breathe a sigh of relief. They no longer have any stake in the market and stop watching the market movements. After a month or two, they just happen to check the business page of a daily. Price of the scrip which they sold for a loss catches their eye. The same scrip is again being traded above the rate at which they sold!

Quickly, they check the price movement of the scrip since they sold it. To their dismay, the price did not go much further down. It moved sideways for a few weeks and has again been moving north. Now, they are in a dilemma: do they have enough appetite for risk to reenter the floor or is it too much for them? Some decide to again take the risk, and history unfortunately repeats itself all over again.

Secondary market has pretty lucrative potential returns but the associated risk is also high. Realizing this, rest of them decide to look for alternative methods to benefit from the ups and downs of the market. The answer comes in the form of a Mutual Fund.

Mutual fund is a financial tool consisting of money collected from multiple investors, primar­ily targeted at smallholder inves­tors who have limited funds and no time to check the market move­ments on a regular basis. These funds are managed by professional money managers who invest pru­dently on stocks, government bonds, debentures, term deposits and so forth as approved by the regulatory body.

They assess the risk associated with each instrument, allocate the fund’s resources to diversify the risk and try to generate capital gains or income for unit holders of mutual fund. The primary objective of a mutual fund is to maximize the return on investment for unit hold­ers who have trusted and invested in them.

Four best friends in their late 20s, all huge fans of Japanese film and television animation, more popularly known as anime, had a brainwave sometime in 2018. With so many followers of anime in Nepal, they thought, why don’t they come together to open the country’s first anime-themed restaurant? Thus did Kyubi’s Kitchen came into being in Jhamsikhel on 31 Dec 2018. The quartet of Pawan Gurung, Bibhusan Basnet, Sujana Limbu and Bhisma Rai had named the restaurant after a popular character in the anime Naruto. The restaurant is especially designed for the Otakus (a Japanese term for people with obsessive inter­est in anime). Growing up watching various anime series, the four best friends used to often think about the characters on display: their attires, their language, and especially about their food. The delicacies they were having looked simply delicious.

Says Pawan Gurung, “Earlier, we used to have conversations on the foods shown in anime. We wanted to taste them. We also had many que­ries: did the foods really exist? And if they did, were they only available in Japan?” And what if potentially thousands of anime lovers in Nepal were asking exactly the same ques­tions? “If they were, why not give them a place where they could find some answers?”

On the ground floor of the restau­rant is a cafe themed after a Japa­nese dark fantasy anime “Tokyo Ghoul” while occupying the upper two floors is a restaurant themed after “Naruto”. The café is a cozy, air-conditioned room with shelves filled with books related to its theme. It serves a wide variety of bespoke cakes and pastries as well as some refreshing varieties of tea and coffee.

Tucked by the side of the café is the main entryway to the restau­rant upstairs. The anime vibe is everywhere: the small lay tables, the cushions, the paintings, they are all designed with Naruto themes. And the menu is presented in a scroll.

The third floor has an open terrace sitting arrangement. (A fourth floor is planned for private celebrations.)

On to food then, which at Kyubi’s Kitchen is a fusion of Japanese and Nepali platters. The goal is to serve the foods shown in anime. Most of the ingredients are Japanese, but with an added Nepali touch. The main dish is ramen and the restau­rant allows you to design your own. You can choose between different types of noodles, broths, toppings, seasonings, and chili levels. A few new dishes are added to the menu every month not to let repeat-cus­tomers get bored.

If you go there, don’t miss Kyu­bi’s Surprise, a combination of the restaurant’s main dishes, which is delectable. Flying Raijin level 2 (Corndogs), Odama Rasengan, (Giant momos), Katon:Ryuka No Jutsu (Honey glazed spicy chicken wings) are some other tempting dishes on offer.

The owners say they plan to expand the franchise to other places in Kathmandu soon.

The café at Jhamsikhel opens at 8:30 am while the restau­rant opens at 12 noon (except on Tuesdays)

 A company with a strong track-record of providing good dividend every year informed NEPSE of the bumper return for the previous fiscal year. The information was posted on the NEPSE website after the market closed for the day at 15:00 pm. The news spread like wildfire. People were ecstatic with expectations of good capital gain. Buyers jostled each other to place pre-order at 10:30 am the next day. When the clock struck 11:00, the floodgates opened. Buy orders over­whelmingly surpassed sell orders. The price shot up in a geometric ratio in no time. Buy orders con­tinued to outpace sell orders with buyers buying at the sellers’ rate.

Clock struck 1:00, and price inched closer to circuit breaker for the day (in NEPSE, circuit break applied for individual scrips is ten percent price movement on either side, positive or negative) as it reached nine plus percent gain. More people queued up (at the buyers’ end) not to lose out on an opportunity to make a quick margin. Suddenly, the price froze in time.

Though it stayed above nine percent gain for the day, its move towards the circuit break was disrupted by continuous trans­actions happening at the buyers’ rate. Trained eyes would notice in the NEPSE floorsheet the sellers appearing at intervals and fulfilling the buyers’ demand at the buyers’ rate itself.

Clock struck 2:00, and the move­ment on the sellers’ side heated up. More and more sellers queued up. The buyers began to bargain for more discount. The sellers gave in to buyers’ demand. Discounted rate further stimulated people to place additional buy orders. The sellers again were in advantage. This stabi­lized the scrip’s rate for a moment. But the growing sell orders further pushed for bargain and the market closed at 3:00 with the day’s gain almost wiped out.

People were left mystified. They counseled themselves trusting there would be fewer sellers the next day. Unfortunately, the same scenario unfolded with the script the next day as well. Growing volume at the selling side pushed the price further down south. The buyers from pre­vious days felt trapped and in com­plete frustration started blaming foul play and mouthing conspiracy theories.

A similar situation occurred with the Premier Insurance Company (PIC) when it declared a dividend of ’79.79% bonus share and 4.20% of cash’ on May 31, 2019 (Friday). The news became public during the weekend. People had time to assess the proposed return. On Sunday ( June 2), the PIC jumped up and opened at Rs 1,249. This was 5 per­cent increment from the previous closing of Rs 1,190 (May 30). The day saw continued buying interest with huge volume transacted. Through­out the day, the buying interest was equally matched by the growing volume of selling orders. The day closed at Rs 1,173 (Rs 17 less than the closing of the previous trading day on May 30) with selling side exhaust­ing the buying interest.

At the heart of this phenomenon was the availability and processing of the information. Traders/inves­tors who had done their homework properly knew that the PIC, being a non-life insurance company, has to raise its capital to Rs 1 billion as per the requirement set by the Insur­ance Board.

This gap in the capital need could be fulfilled either by issuing right or providing bonus. Its financial reports already revealed enough funds with the PIC from net profit and in reserves to provide bonus. The ones who had processed two pieces of information had already discounted effects of the news in the price movement.

They accumulated the scrip at different support zones and were waiting to cash in on the news. The market, starting from the Wall Street, calls this phenome­non “buy on the rumor and sell on the news.

 According to a recent report by the Department of Transport Management, the number of motorcycles plying the streets of Nepal has risen to a whopping 2.5 million, with Kathmandu Valley alone having a million-plus motor­bikes. And with this rise, the sellers of one commodity in particular have benefitted a lot. Today, you have more options in helmets than ever—full helmets, half helmets, helmets you can flip up, off-road helmets, dual-sport hel­mets, dad passed down-looking hel­mets, helmets… To understand the ‘helmet’ market better, we headed to the largest wholesale retail mar­ket in the valley: Teku.

We walk into a local helmet retail shop and sit down with the owner, Shyam Chaudhary, who has been in the business for the past eight years. He reveals that the largest change in market trend over time has been customers’ increasing preference for quality over price. “Some years ago, people would only look for helmets that cost between Rs 500-800 and they didn’t care about anything else. That has changed”. He reveals that young­sters today are increasingly aware of the importance of a good helmet. “They ask how damage resistant helmets are, the ease of procur­ing spare parts, the comfort—all before they inquire about prices,” he says.

In these markets, helmet cost ranges from Rs 800 to over Rs 7,000. Chaudhary says his shop sells 6-7 pieces a day on average. And most of his helmets go for around Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000. The profit margin on every helmet sold is around 12-15 percent. “The market is definitely growing. But with that, we also have many competitors,” he adds. Not only in Teku. Helmet shops are sprouting up like wild-grass in every nook of the valley.

While the Teku markets cater mostly to the average bike rider, shops like Helmets Nepal also look after high-end customers. “We sell helmets from brands like AGV, Benelli, Steelbird, and Vega. The price increases with sophistica­tion,” says Rais Maharjan, a senior sales officer at Helmets Nepal. The most expensive one he has costs Rs 170,000. Yes, almost as much as a brand new Hero Honda Splendor. With entry of bikes setting you back by hundreds of thousands in the market, the premium helmet sector is definitely getting a good slice of the pie.

Recently, online marketplaces have also stepped up to cater to this growing demand. Daraz, a leading online marketplace, today offers a variety of helmets, as you get to choose from 20+ brands from the comfort of your home.

“Helmets are no longer the piece of hemispherical dullness they once were. They now have their own identity. Some flashy-hip, some gentle, some queer and some mil­itary looking,” says Adarsha Acha­rya, a helmet enthusiast who owns multiple helmets, of all shapes and prices.