BY BASHER KAHLOUT
T
he stock market performance this week was full of surprises but was not taken into account by a lot of dealers and market observers. The average volume of daily trading was close to QR650m, but on Wednesday reached at QR1bn. This sudden jump was not because of movements made by liquidity providers or just ordinary customers, but rather an outcome of big deals carried by foreign investors.
Understandably some of them might have been done in accordance with advance payment mechanisms creating confusion in the trading system and forcing managers to suspend trading at the exchange on Tuesday.
The index rose strongly on Sunday and Monday, while dropped on Wednesday and Thursday, because speculators sold the stocks of big companies, especially the leading Qatar industries and Qatar National Bank (QNB) realising that profits of these companies will go down.
In total, the index surged by about 70 points compared with the previous week reaching to 10,283 points. The index of all-shares, besides share indices of six sectors, added QR3.3bn to the stocks raising the market capitalisation to QR553bn.
The week witnessed some important developments in the Qatari market such as the sale of properties worth QR20bn by Barwa Real Estate to Qatari Diar, a strategic partner of Barwa and Vodafone turning into a net profit earning company after recovering its losses, in light of the third quarter results disclosed recently, also affected the trading prices of some stocks.
Moreover, the Islamic Holding Group declaration of appointment to offer shares of those who retarded to pay the value of the increase in capital, as well as other news concerning Ooredoo, Salam International, Gulf International and Ezdan.
The rise of the benchmark and the indices of all-shares were resulted from the rise in prices of six sector shares. Where the Real Estate Sector index prices rose by 4.93 percent, and share prices of goods and services sector increased by 1.39 percent, transport sector index by 1.17 percent, telecommunications sector by 0.91 percent, share price of industries sector 0.34 percent, the banking sector index was up 0.13 percent, while the price of shares of the insurance sector dropped by 0.67 percent.
The rise of indexes was resulted from the increase in the prices of shares of 23 companies, and decrease in the prices of shares of another 18 companies, while the share price of Doha Bank remained stable at a price of QR56.8 since the previous week.
Dlala Holding’s share prices witnessed the highest rise of 9.51 percent, despite company reported a loss year. This was followed by the share price rise of Medicare by 9.44 percent to QR53.9, price rise of shares of Investors by 8.53 percent to QR38.53, while share price of Barwa rose by 8 percent to QR29.6. The price of Vodafone shares rose by 7.76 percent to QR10.56, share price of Cinema by 3.49 percent, and the share price of Mazaya by 3.2 percent.
Shares of Islamic Holding Group was the highest loser by 3.15 percent, followed by Doha Insurance which dropped by 2.70 percent. The share price of Gulf International was down by 1.86 percent. Widam share prices dropped by 1.75 percent; the shares of Al Mannai Corp were down by 1.69 percent, and shares of Islamic Insurance fell by 1.55 percent.
Concerning liquidity, despite trading being restricted to only four days, the total trading volume has increased by 37.5 percent, to the level of QR2.5963bn, and the average of daily trading increased to QR649m, compared with QR377.8m in the previous week. Total trading on shares of the top six companies reached at about QR1.5242bn, which is 58.7 percent of the total. THE PENINSULA