By Santhosh V PerumalBusiness Reporter
The buying support form foreign institutions exerted bullish momentum to the Qatar Exchange (QE), which saw about 79% of the stocks return gains in the week in anticipation of robust third-quarter results.Notwithstanding the increased selling pressure from local retail investors and domestic institutions, the QE was the best performer in the Gulf region in the review week as it rose 1.87% vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia’s gain of 1.72% and Kuwait’s 0.71%; while the bourses of Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Muscat fell 1.35%, 0.78%, 0.67% and 0.35% respectively.Micro, large and mid caps largely saw buying interest as the QE’s 20-stock benchmark settled 154 points higher at 8,396.53. The market crossed the 8,400 mark on Wednesday as the week saw market heavyweight Industries Qatar (IQ) report a 54% jump in its first nine-month net profit.The Qatari bourse is down 3.28% year-to-date (YTD) vis-à-vis Bahrain’s decline of 19.71%, followed by Muscat (18.34%), Kuwait (15.64%), Dubai (15.08%), Abu Dhabi (8.90%) and Saudi Arabia (7.79%).Banking and industrial counters witnessed brisk buying in the week that saw Ibrahim al-Ibrahim, economic adviser to HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, say inflation in the country is expected to be less than 2% this year.Commercialbank, Doha Bank, IQ, Masraf Al Rayan, Qatar Islamic Bank, QNB, Qatar Electricity and Water as well as Barwa were among the prime gainers in the week that saw Doha Bank report a 13% rise in net profit during January-September this year.The industrial segment witnessed maximum buying interest as its group index surged 3.37%, followed by lenders (2.05%), services (1%) and insurance (0.65%) in the review week that witnessed Al Meera Consumer Goods Company report a 21% jump in its first nine-month net profit.The indices of services, industry and insurance have lost YTD 8.79%, 8.75%, 7.19% and 6.59% respectively; while banks gained 1.40%.Of the 42 stocks; 33 advanced, while only seven declined and one was unchanged. Another one was not traded in the week that featured an HSBC forecast that Qatar’s trade volume is expected to grow by 160% in the next 15 years, more than twice the world average of 73%, mainly due to its growing business deals with Asia, Latin America and other Middle East countries.Seven of the eight banks, four of the five insurers, six of the seven industries and 16 of the 22 services reported gains in the week that saw the Middle East and North Africa fund managers call for unified rules on asset management in view of the huge and growing pool of wealth in the Gulf region.Market capitalisation shot up 1.50% or about QR7bn to QR440.48bn with micro, large and mid cap equities rising 2.79%, 2.04% and 1.42% respectively in the week that saw Nakilat say it was considering to convert its tankers to burn liquefied natural gas instead of oil, but said it would not have any financial impact.Large, small and mid cap stocks have declined YTD 13.17%, 10.95% and 7.21% respectively; while micro caps surged 16.65%.Foreign institutions turned bullish as they were net buyers to the tune of 2.18% compared with net sellers of 37.67% in the previous week.A higher 21.80% of them were into buying against 14.09% in the week ended October 6 whereas a much lower 19.62% were into selling compared to 51.76%.On the other hand, domestic institutions’ bullish grip considerably weakened amidst their higher exposure as net buying sunk to 3.37% from 19.49% in the previous week.A higher 37.14% of them bought stocks against 35.36% in the week ended October 6 but a much higher 33.77% offloaded compared to 15.87%.Local retail investors turned profit-takers as they were net sellers to the extent of 3.92% against net buyers of 16.54% the previous week.A lower 33.80% of them were into buying equities compared to 40.38% in the week ended October 6 whereas a much higher 37.72% were into selling against 23.84%.Non-Qatari individual investors turned bearish as they were net sellers to the tune of 1.63% compared with net buyers of 1.63% in the previous week.A lower 7.26% of them purchased stocks against 10.16% in the week ended October 6 while a marginally higher 8.89% sold compared to 8.53%.The bourse’s price-earning ratio, a measure of expensiveness, was 13.10 times in the week ended October 13 against 11.93 times in the comparable period of 2010.The price-to-book value was 1.69 times at the end of second week of October against 1.96 times in the year-ago period.Total share trading volume was down 12% to 21.94mn, value by 1% to QR1.11bn and transactions by 21% to 14,124.The banking sector dominated the trading ring as its shares accounted for 55.20%, 55.86% and 46.11% of total volume, value and transactions in the review week against 49.82%, 58.93% and 46.81% respectively a week ago.The services sector cornered 33.50% of total trading volume (against 40.32% the previous week), followed by industry 10.76% (8.90%) and insurance 0.55% (0.96%).The insurance sector’s trading volume plummeted 50% to 0.12mn shares, services by 27% to 7.35mn and lenders by 3% to 12.11mn; whereas industry gained 6% to 2.36mn.The services accounted for 25.23% of total stock trading value (compared to 22.32% a week ago), followed by industry 18.02% (16.96%) and insurance 0.90% (1.79%).The insurance sector’s trading value plunged 54% to QR7.10mn and banks by 6% to QR621.10mn; while services rose 12% to QR281.72mn and industry by 5% to QR200.86mn.Doha Bank equities accounted for 20.57% of total trading value, followed by IQ (14.75%) and Masraf Al Rayan (11.40%).Services’ share in total transactions stood at 35.40% (against 38.32% the previous week), followed by industry at 17.36% (13.08%) and insurance at 1.13% (1.78%).The insurance sector’s deals tanked 50% to 159; services by 27% to 5,000 and lenders by 23% to 6,513; while industry was up 4% to 2,452.