Ask a room of first-time investors in Nepal which share they would buy first and most will say the same handful of names. Our data confirms it. Across 10,166 practice trades placed on StockYatra by 29 September 2026, six NEPSE names account for the bulk of the activity — and one of them accounts for more than a third of everything.
In short
- NABIL is 38% of all practice trades on StockYatra: 3,895 trades.
- NTC (861), NICA (658), NIFRA (543), GBIME (325) and UPPER (256) complete the top six.
- Beginners gravitate to banks, the telecom, the infrastructure fund and a hydropower name — the household names.
- Outside Nepal: AAPL (446) is the runaway US favourite; RELIANCE (278) leads India by a mile.
- This is what people practise on, not what anyone should buy. Data, not advice.
The NEPSE top six
- NABIL (Nabil Bank) — 3,895 trades. More than the next five names combined. NABIL is the first name on our Nepal board and the best-known bank in the country, so it is where a first trade lands. It is also the stock most people use to test a stop-loss for the first time.
- NTC (Nepal Telecom) — 861. A high-priced, slow-moving share. Beginners seem to treat it as the "safe" experiment after NABIL.
- NICA (NIC Asia Bank) — 658. The second bank on the list, and the most-shorted NEPSE name in our data.
- NIFRA (Nepal Infrastructure Bank) — 543. A low-priced share, which makes it popular with traders who want to "own a lot of units" with a small balance — a habit worth unlearning.
- GBIME (Global IME Bank) — 325.
- UPPER (Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower) — 256. The only hydropower name in the top six, and the most volatile of them in our simulation.
Why NABIL is 38%
Part of it is fame; part of it is us. NABIL is listed first on the Nepal board, it is the example in several lessons, and the daily Bull-or-Bear call often includes it. We are fine with that: a simulator needs a "home" stock that everyone has traded, because it makes the community's conversations comparable. But we also nudge people outward — the sector heatmap and the Movers screen exist so that the second trade is not NABIL too.
What beginners pick outside Nepal
When we added US and Indian stocks, the choices were even more concentrated. On the US board, AAPL has 446 trades; the next names — MSFT (69), GOOGL (67), AMZN (34), TSLA (32) — barely register. In India, RELIANCE has 278, followed by TCS (28), HDFCBANK (25), SBIN (13) and TATAMOTORS (11). The pattern is the same everywhere: people practise on the one company they already know.
What this is not
This is a count of practice trades on a simulator, taken on one day. It says nothing about whether any of these companies are good investments, and it is not a list of shares to buy. If anything, the lesson runs the other way: a portfolio that is 38% one bank is a concentration problem, and the point of practising is to notice that before it costs real money. Read how to pick stocks as a beginner and the risk-management rules before your next trade — paper or real.
Key takeaways
- NABIL, NTC, NICA, NIFRA, GBIME and UPPER are the NEPSE names beginners practise on most.
- AAPL and RELIANCE dominate the US and Indian boards for the same reason: fame.
- Concentration is the habit to watch. Use the heatmap and Movers to widen your second trade.
- Data, not advice — none of this is a recommendation.
Method: counts are from StockYatra's production database on 29 September 2026. "Traders" are registered accounts; "practice trades" are orders placed in the simulator. All trades are paper — virtual coins, no real money. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything.
Practise on NEPSE names, free
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