By Santhosh V Perumal
Business Reporter

The Qatar Stock Exchange was back in the negative terrain on Tuesday and its key index lost 82 points to settle below the 11,900 mark, mainly on profit booking from both domestic and foreign institutions.
Realty, industrials and consumer goods witnessed the maximum selling pressure as the 20-stock Qatar Index fell 0.69% to 11,831.33 points on lower trade volumes.
The index that tracks Shariah-principled stocks was seen melting the most in the market, which is down 3.7% year-to-date.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) individuals and institutions were also increasingly net sellers in the bourse, where trading was largely skewed towards the real estate and banking sectors, whose stocks together constituted more than 62% of the overall trading volume.
Market capitalisation eroded 0.5% or more than QR3bn to QR628.81bn with small, large and micro cap equities melting 1.04%, 0.68% and 0.18% respectively; while mid caps rose 0.15%.
The Total Return Index shed 0.69% to 18,390.11 points, All Share Index by 0.55% to 3,174.03 points and Al Rayan Islamic Index by 0.8% to 4,652.15 points.
Realty stocks shrank 1%, industrials (0.75%), consumer goods (0.69%), telecom (0.45%), banks and financial services (0.4%) and insurance (0.21%); while transport rose 0.27%.
More than 76% of the stocks were in the red with major losers being QNB, Industries Qatar, United Development Company, Ooredoo, Vodafone Qatar, Aamal Company, Gulf International Services, Ezdan, Barwa, Mazaya Qatar, Qatar Islamic Bank, Commercial Bank, Masraf Al Rayan, al khaliji and Qatari Investors Group; even as Nakilat, Doha Bank, Qatar Islamic Insurance and Qatar General and Reinsurance bucked the trend.
Domestic institutions turned net sellers to the tune of QR3.52mn against net buyers of QR5.04mn on Monday.
Non-Qatari institutions’ net profit booking strengthened to QR18.26mn compared to QR9.79mn on July 27.
Non-Qatari individual investors’ net selling increased to QR3.52mn against QR3.26mn the previous day.
The GCC individual investors’ net profit booking soared to QR2.8mn compared to QR0.51mn on Monday.
The GCC institutions’ net selling also strengthened to QR1.95mn against QR0.64mn on July 27.
However, local retail investors’ net buying surged to QR38.04mn compared to QR9.2mn the previous day.
Total trade volume was down 9% to 4.83mn shares, while value rose 5% to QR224.33mn and deals by 22% to 7,217.
The real estate sector saw 32% plunge in trade volume to 2.05mn equities, 43% in value to QR49.89mn and 20% in transactions to 1,256.
The consumer goods sector’s trade volume declined 8% to 0.36mn stocks, while value gained 88% to QR38.05mn and deals by 68% to 1,496.
However, there was 46% surge in the industrials sector’s trade volume to 0.57mn shares, 52% in value to QR37.37mn and 22% in transactions to 1,244.
The insurance sector’s trade volume soared 45% to 0.32mn equities, value by 85% to QR22.43mn and deals by 38% to 1,093.
The market witnessed 29% expansion in the transport sector’s trade volume to 0.18mn stocks and 8% in value to QR7.62mn on more than doubled transactions to 282.
The banks and financial services sector’s trade volume shot up 27% to 0.95mn shares, value by 4% to QR55.73mn and deals by 13% to 1,494.
The telecom sector saw 5% rise in trade volume to QR0.4mn equities, 55% in value to QR13.23mn and 77% in transactions to 352.
In the debt market, there was no trading of treasury bills and government bonds.

Related Story