Strong buying interests — especially in real estate and banking — on Monday lifted the Qatar Stock Exchange and placed its key index above 9,400 levels.
Foreign institutions’ strong bullish sentiments rather imparted a 0.78% thrust to the 20-stock Qatar Index to 9,435.29 points.
Doha Bank and Masraf Al Rayan sponsored exchange traded funds QETF and QATR witnessed 8.24% and 2.33% gains respectively.
The Islamic stocks were, however, seen underperforming the other indices on the market, which reported 10.7% year-to-date gains.
Local retail investors were increasingly net sellers and there was weakened net buying support from domestic funds on the bourse, whose capitalisation expanded 1.1% to QR514.7bn, mainly owing to large caps.
Trade turnover and volumes were on the increase on the market, where banking and transport sectors together accounted for more than 55% of the total volume.
The Total Return Index gained 0.78% to 16,623.93 points, All Share Index by 0.96% to 2,719.49 points and Al Rayan Islamic Index (Price) by 0.64% to 2,316.07 points.
The realty index soared 1.42%, banks and financial services (1.26%), industrials (0.96%), insurance (0.51%), telecom (0.24%) and consumer goods (0.11%); while transport declined 0.4%.
More than 61% of the traded stocks extended gains with major movers being Industries Qatar, QNB, Ezdan, Qatar Electricity and Water, Mazaya Qatar, Ooredoo, Medicare Group, Qatar Islamic Bank, al khaliji and Masraf Al Rayan; even as Doha bank, Dlala, Zad Holding, Qatari Investors Group, Nakilat and Vodafone Qatar were among the losers.
Non-Qatari institutions’ net buying strengthened considerably to QR30.6mn compared to QR0.84mn on Sunday.
The Gulf institutions turned net buyers to the tune of QR0.66mn against net sellers of QR3.31mn the previous day.
Non-Qatari individual investors’ net selling declined perceptibly to QR0.71mn compared to QR1.9mn on July 22.
However, local individual investors’ net profit booking increased substantially to QR30.81mn against QR0.4mn on Sunday.
The Gulf individuals turned net sellers to the extent of QR0.18mn compared with net buyers of QR0.08mn the previous day.
Domestic institutions’ net buying weakened influentially to QR0.43mn against QR4.69mn on July 22.
Total trade volume rose 12% to 4.55mn shares, value by 82% to QR153.99mn and transactions by 90% at 2,998.
The insurance sector’s trade volume grew more than five-fold to 0.27mn equities and value also by more than five-fold to QR9.77mn on more than doubled deals to 122.
The real estate sector’s trade volume more than doubled to 0.64mn stocks and value more than tripled to QR12.02mn on more than doubled transactions to 341.
The banks and financial services sector’s trade volume soared 55% to 1.92mn shares and value more than doubled to QR74.72mn on almost doubled deals to 1,158.
The consumer goods sector reported 33% surge in trade volume to 0.16mn equities, 40% in value to QR14.97mn and 13% in transactions to 167.
The industrials sector’s trade volume expanded 26% to 0.34mn stocks and value more than doubled to QR20.47mn on more than doubled deals to 639.
However, the telecom sector saw 63% plunge in trade volume to 0.49mn shares and 23% in value to QR10.32mn; whereas transactions more than doubled to 359.
The transport sector’s trade volume was down 6% to 0.72mn equities and value by 13% to QR11.72mn; while deals grew 11% to 212.
In the debt market, there was no trading of treasury bills and sovereign bonds.

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