Doha: Qatar Exchange (QE) index gained 44.91 points or 0.38 percent when the bourse closed yesterday at 11,903.23 points compared to 11,858.32 points on Sunday. The market capitalisation increased to QR633.49bn compared with QR631.62bn on Sunday.
Trading value increased to QR211.55m with a volume of 4,960,327 shares from 2,582 transactions compared with QR154.27m with a volume of 3,538,778 shares from 2,378 transactions on Sunday. Indices of all the sectors ended in the green. The insurance index advanced the most, up 3 percent to 4,823.09 points.
Investors traded shares of 39 from the 43 QE-listed companies. Of these shares of 24 gained, 13 declined and two remained unchanged.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s bourse fell as modest trading volumes indicated there were no big fund inflows from abroad on the first day that the market opened to direct foreign investment. After rising as much as 0.5 percent in the opening minutes, the main Saudi stock index closed 0.9 percent lower as most blue chips in MSCI’s provisional Saudi benchmark tumbled.
Saudi Basic Industries, the biggest petrochemicals firm in the kingdom, lost 1.5 percent and top lender National Commercial Bank retreated by 1.1 percent.
Saudi Arabia’s market is currently richly valued, trading at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 16.8 times, well ahead of all other Gulf markets and roughly on a par with Britain’s FTSE 100 and the U.S. S&P 500, which are valued at 16.1 and 17.3 times respectively.
Although Saudi Arabia’s entry into international indexes could eventually attract tens of billions of dollars of additional foreign money, MSCI this month chose not to start a formal review to include the bourse in its emerging markets benchmark, saying it would monitor the market first. Even if it chooses later to fast-track the procedure, inclusion is very unlikely before mid-2017, analysts say.
Other Gulf markets were mostly positive, led by Dubai, which climbed 0.5 percent on speculative buying in the absence of major corporate news. Amlak recovered from early losses and surged 15 percent, its daily limit, after tumbling by 10 percent for two sessions in a row. The stock, which had previously more than doubled within one week, accounted for a half of total traded value in Dubai.
The company resumed trading this month after a six-year suspension over debt issues which it has finally resolved. But analysts have described its rally as a momentum play and not based on fundamentals. Two other names popular with retail investors, builder Arabtec and Union Properties, rose 1.9 and 2.4 percent respectively.
Heavyweight Emaar Properties fell 1.1 percent after it played down Polish media reports which said the firm planned large investments in the Eastern European country.
Abu Dhabi’s bourse edged up 0.2 percent. Egypt’s bourse slipped 0.2 percent with most companies in the red. However, investment bank EFG Hermes rose 1.4 percent after it launched a leasing business and the company’s chief executive said he believed it was well capitalised for strong growth.
QNA/Reuters
