DUBAI: Qatar’s stock market closed nearly flat yesterday after a brief, panicked sell-off. Dubai rose while other Gulf markets moved little.
The Doha index slid as much as 3.2 percent to a seven-week low shortly after the market opened.
But selling of stocks eased later yesterday as buyers emerged.
Most stocks closed little changed yesterday but Gulf International Services surged 5.8 percent after announcing some success in mitigating the impact of low oil prices on its drilling rig business.
The company said late on Tuesday it had succeeded in leasing out one of two idled jack-up rigs and the second was being considered for work to start early next year.
Ezdan, down 2.6 percent, is in profit-taking mode after jumping last month on its inclusion in MSCI’s emerging markets index. Vodafone Qatar was down 2.5 percent after announcing quarterly results.
Elsewhere in the Gulf, Dubai added 1.0 percent in active trade. Emaar Properties, the emirate’s biggest listed developer, rose 0.3 percent.
Amlak Finance, which is not part of the index but is 45 percent owned by Emaar, surged its daily 15 percent limit and was the most traded stock in Dubai. Trading in Amlak had been suspended for nearly six years because of debt problems before it restarted on Tuesday, when the stock closed flat.
Saudi Arabia’s stock index edged down 0.4 percent after oil prices fell more than two percent yesterday as the US dollar strengthened and oversupply weighed on markets ahead of a key meeting of Opec oil producers.
Heavyweight petrochemicals firm Saudi Basic Industries, whose earnings are sensitive to oil prices, lost 0.4 percent.
Oil shipper Bahri tumbled 4.5 percent, extending losses since the stock exchange said on Tuesday it was one of five local companies in which foreigners would not be able to buy shares when the market opens to direct foreign investment this month.
The other four companies are real estate developers and focus on the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah.
Another negative factor for the market was a relatively weak purchasing manager index. Growth in Saudi Arabia’s non-oil private sector slowed to a 12-month low in May as expansion of both output and new orders slackened.
In Egypt, business activity in the private sector, excluding oil, shrank for the fifth month in a row in May but edged closer to expansion as employment rose, a similar survey indicated.
The Cairo index rose 0.7 percent to 8,906 points but closed well off its intra-day high of 8,953 points as Ezz Steel gave up early gains and tumbled 5.7 percent after swinging to an annual financial loss.
Egypt’s biggest steelmaker reported a net loss of 836m Egyptian pounds ($109.5m) for 2014, against a net profit of 528m pounds in the previous year.
Reuters
