21/03/2011 00:00 AST
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) stock markets resumed bearish performance as a result of political turmoil across the Arab world. Five markets closed last week's sessions in red, except for the Dubai and Bahraini bourses.
A statement released by Bayan Investment Company on Sunday said most of the markets in the region witnessed hefty speculations and corporate earnings, thus leading to further losses and boosting trade activities, as well as leading to rise of the volume and value of the trade.
Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) incurred the least losses, compared to the other GCC markets, affected with various factors namely declaration of the law of the finance market authority and the revelation of a plan to create a company to acquire the bourse to render the KSE a public shareholding company, where citizens would have 50 percent of the stocks through public subscription. The rest of the shares could be auctioned among the listed companies.
The Abu Dhabi stock market was on top of the losers, pushed down by speculations and profit pocketing targeting blue-chips.
Muscat market came second among the markets that performed bearishly as a result of wide-spread stock sell-off that involved foreign traders. The Saudi market came third, affected with losses recorded on the international markets as a result of the Japanese catastrophe, where hefty speculations targeted top stocks.
The Qatari stock exchange was fourth, buoyed by noticeable speculations that involved foreigners.
Trade value at the KSE rose 18.60 followed by the Saudi market, 9.71 percent. Dubai finance market was at the ebb as the daily trade value grew only 1.10 percent. That of Bahrain fell more than 27 percent.
In other news, Saudi Arabia's crude oil exports increased by 5.4 percent in January as exports from other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) such as Algeria, Nigeria, Ecuador, and Kuwait fell, official primary data from exporting countries showed Sunday.
According to Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia's crude oil exports reached 6.39 million barrels per day (bpd) in January from 6.05 million barrels in December, according to Saudi official data posted on the Joint Data Initiative (JODI) Web site.
Exports from Algeria fell by 122,000 bpd to 684,000 bpd, while they fell in Nigeria by 146,000 bpd to 2.41 million bpd. Kuwait's exports fell slightly by 11,000 bpd and exports fell by 17,000 bpd in Ecuador.
Exports from the rest of the 13 member countries of OPEC increased during that month with exception of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which did not submit data.
Significant increase in crude oil exports during January came from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela after they added 347,000 bpd and 168,000 bpd, respectively.
Agencies
Please wait...
