By Santhosh V Perumal

Business Reporter

The MSCI weighting upgrade decision had its positive spill-over effect for the second day on Qatar Stock Exchange with its key index adding 37 more points. The benchmark, however, failed to break the 13,700 level.

Non-Qatari individual investors’ enhanced buying interests as well as the continued bullish momentum from domestic and foreign institutions helped the 20-stock Qatar Index (based on price data) to gain 0.27% to 13,682.04 points on rising volumes.

Buying interests was largely visible in the real estate, banks and financial services and consumer goods sectors in the market, which is up 31.82% year-to-date.

Market capitalisation expanded 0.18%, or more than QR1bn, to QR727.62bn. Micro, large and mid-cap equities gained 0.83%, 0.38% and 0.24% respectively; while small caps fell 0.26%.

Realty stocks appreciated 0.81%, followed by banks and financial services (0.51%), consumer goods (0.35%), insurance (0.3%) and transport (0.05%); whereas telecom and industrials fell 0.57% and 0.17% respectively.

Major movers included QNB, Qatar Islamic Bank, Islamic Holding Group, Mannai Corp, Barwa, Mazaya Qatar and Nakilat.

However, Ooredoo, Gulf Warehousing, Al Meera, Dlala and Mesaieed Petrochemical Holding were seen to buck the trend.

Ezdan and Masraf Al Rayan were the most active in terms of both volume and value respectively.

Foreign institutions’ net buying surged to QR82.48mn against QR26.02mn on Monday.

Domestic institutions’ net buying fell to QR10.85mn compared to QR14.81mn the previous day.

Non-Qatari individual investors’ net buying swelled to QR17.08mn against QR8.9mn on Monday.

Qatari retail investors’ net profit-booking strengthened considerably to QR110.42mn compared to QR49.74mn the previous day.

Total trading volume rose 16% to 20.59mn stocks, value by 10% to QR943.8mn and transactions by 1% to 8,580.

The insurance sector’s trading volume jumped more than nine-fold to 0.75mn equities and value by more than eight-fold to QR36.79mn on more-than-tripled-deals to 255.

The consumer goods sector saw its trading volume surge 72% to 2.53mn shares, value by 58% to QR93.43mn and transactions by 53% to 925.

The telecom sector’s trading volume soared 70% to 2.54mn stocks, value by 16% to QR69.48mn and deals by 15% to 701.

The banks and financial services sector reported a 19% expansion in trading volume to 5.24mn equities, 24% in value to QR388.94mn and 8% in transactions to 2,580.

However, the transport sector’s trading volume plummeted 51% to 0.64mn shares, value by 19% to QR27.24mn and deals by 17% to 300.

The industrials sector’s trading volume declined 7% to 2.32mn stocks, value by 32% to QR160.94mn and transactions by 23% to 2,050.

The real-estate sector witnessed a less than 1% fall in trading volume to 6.57mn equities but value rose 11% to QR166.98mn. Deals were down 2% to 1,769.

In the debt market, there was no trading of treasury bills and government bonds.