DOHA: A correction dragged Qatar bourse below the 10,000 levels and its capitlaisation shrank 8.5bn in a single day trading, making it the worst performer among the gulf peers yesterday.
The Qatar Exchange (QE) benchmark index tanked 1.79 percent or 180.24 points to 9,898.54 from previous closing of 10,078.78 points. All the sector indices ended in red with the industrials, banks and financial services and transportation dropping the most.
All firms on the 20-stock index fell with Nakilat suffering the most, dropping 4.13 percent.
The market breadth was strongly negative as only two stocks advanced against 37 companies that declined.
QE’s daily trading data showed local institutional investors booked profits in a big way. The bourse also experienced selling pressures from foreign institutional investors. This impacted the trading that pushed down the index below 10,000 points.
“Call it soft landing or correction. The index has been mostly going up over the past two months before breaching the resistance level. Now the investors are back from their holidays and its profit taking time”, an analyst told The Peninsula.
The volume of the shares were up to 9m from Sunday’s 4.2m and the value of shares increased to QR460m from QR185m. Qatar National Bank (QNB), Industries Qatar, Commercial Bank of Qatar and Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB) were among other top losers. QNB dropped 1.59 percent to QR173.40. Industries Qatar slipped 1.49 percent to QR158.90. While Commercial Bank Qatar fell 1.56 percent to QR69.20, QIB was down by 2.46 percent to QR71.50 percent.
General Insurance dropped 4.68 percent to QR50.90. Nakilat lost 4.13 percent to QR19.15 and Qatar Navigation lost 2.79 percent to QR80.10.
Maximum selling was seen in the transportation sector, which tumbled 3.30 percent. It was followed by Banks and Financial Index (1.72 percent), Industrial index (1.58 percent) Insurance index (1.33 percent), Real Estate (1.27 percent) and Telecoms index (1.27 percent).
Meanwhile, other regional markets retreated in a much-awaited profit-taking move but it was worsened by rising geo-political uncertainty after last week’s reported chemical weapons attack in Syria.
The Saudi kingdom’s benchmark fell 0.9 percent to 8,055 points, its biggest one-day drop since June 16 — the previous instance of heightened political tension around Syria on reports of the military’s use of chemical weapons.
Selling was spread out across sectors, trimming benchmark gains to 18.4 percent for 2013.
In the United Arab Emirates, markets were more resilient as its safe haven status and a recovery in the real estate sector underpinned an optimistic outlook.
Small-caps lead trading on Dubai’s bourse as retail traders shifted positions from other similar stocks but the index slipped 0.2 percent, trimming 2013 gains to 69.3 percent.
Drake and Scull rose 2.5 percent, the most actively traded stock. National Central Cooling (Tabreed) surged 14.8 percent.
“There’s high retail activity across the region — institutional investors have participated in selective choices because they look for value rather than momentum,” said Marwan Shurrab, fund manager and head of trading at Vision Investments.
The Peninsula/Reuters
