07/09/2014 01:21 AST
Along with its international and regional peers, the Muscat Securities Market continues to hold its winning streak.
On the last day of trading on Thursday last, the benchmark MSM30 Index, the barometer of the market sentiment, closed at a new five-year high of 7,479.33 points.
MSM Sharia Index closed at 1,072.12, up by 0.18 per cent, while MSM capitalisation stood at RO 8.064 billion on the same day.
According to analysts, the rise in conventional banking stocks with a 45 per cent weightage in MSM 30 Index, aided the record surge in the market.
During the current quarter, MSM index has seen one of the best performances since 2008. In August alone the index made a gain of 2.3 per cent at 7,367 points. Financial, industrial and services indices closed higher by 1.6, 1.2 per cent and 2.3 per cent respectively, in the month.
The last time the market touched this year was on October 21, 2008, when the bourse touched 7,378 points.
“The market is witnessing renewed optimism with support from both local and international investors”, said Joice Mathew, Senior Manager, Research at United Securities.
Although the market witnessed range bound trading coupled with lacklustre volumes in the middle of the month, the bourse gathered momentum towards the end.
On Thursday, a total number of 1,435 trades were executed generating turnover of RO 7.76 million with over 22.35 million shares traded. Al Madina Takaful was the most active in terms of volume while National Bank of Oman was the most active in terms of turnover.
The top gainer of the day was Global Financial Investment, up by 6.06 per cent while the top loser of the day was National Gas, down by 1.63 per cent.
Of the 51 traded stocks, 19 advanced, 8 declined and 24 were unchanged. At the close, Omani investors were net buyers for RO 342,000 followed by foreign investors for RO 308,000 while GCC and Arab investors were net sellers for RO 650,000 worth of shares.
At the same time, in August foreign investors ended as net buyers to an extent of RO 5.251 million for the month. Local and GCC Investors emerged as net sellers to an extent of RO 3.325 million and RO 1.782 million respectively.
“We expect the overall market sentiments to remain strong in September”, said analysts at Gulf Baader Capital Markets.
The local bourse has so far averaged 4589 points from 1996 until 2014, reaching an all-time high of 12109.10 Index Points in June of 2008 and a record low of 1463.40 Index Points in December of 2001.
The MSM 30, a capitalization-weighted index, is a major stock market index which tracks the performance of 30 most profitable companies traded in the Muscat Securities Market.
“We do remain affirmative on the local market looking at a medium term and also incremental institutional participation would take the market to new highs. We do see the upcoming results expectations and institutional re-balancing towards year-end would keep the volumes relatively high”, Gulf Baader analysts added.
In the region, bourses in the United Arab Emirates outperformed others as Dubai developer Emaar Properties rebounded after profit-taking and Abu Dhabi’s Waha Capital jumped after securing $575 million in fresh funding.
Dubai’s main index rose 1.1 per cent to a three-month closing high of 5,172 points as shares in Emaar gained 2.2 per cent.
Abu Dhabi’s index added 1.0 per cent on the back of large lenders First Gulf Bank and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, which rose 2.2 and 2.0 per cent respectively.
Qatar’s bourse edged up 0.7 per cent after funds tracking MSCI’s frontier market index sold local stocks en masse as part of gradual rebalancing which followed Qatar’s upgrade to emerging market status in May.
Saudi Arabia’s market rose 0.1 per cent to 11,061 points with Petrochemical giant Saudi Basic Industries adding 0.9 per cent.
Oman Daily Observer
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