Stronger oil prices and an expansionary budget had their positive influence on the Qatar Stock Exchange, which gained 308 points in its key index and more than QR20bn in capitalisation last week.
Foreign institutions were increasingly into buying this week which saw Qatar Petroleum embark into localisation drive within energy sector, a move that ought to support the corporate sector in the country.
Real estate, industrials, insurance and consumer goods counters witnessed higher than average demand last week which saw Nakilat-Keppel Offshore and Marine successfully held a steel cutting ceremony for the first offshore living quarters to be fabricated in Qatar.
More than 78% of the traded stocks extended gains with major movers being Ezdan, Qatar Insurance, Industries Qatar, Qatari Investors Group, Commercial Bank, Qatar Islamic Bank, QNB, Al Khaliji, Alijarah Holding, Qatari Germany Company for Medical Devices, Aamal Company, Nakilat and Gulf Warehousing; even as Ooredoo, Qatar Electricity and Water, Barwa and Qatar Aluminium Manufacturing Company were among the losers this week which saw Qatar register 1% year-on-year expansion in machinery and equipment index during in the second half of 2018.
Islamic stocks were seen gaining faster than the main index and other indices in the market last week, which saw domestic institutions turning bullish.
Strong demand for large and midcap equities resulted in a 3.43% jump in market capitalisation to QR611.46bn this week which saw a Kamco Research report view that the outlook for initial public offerings in the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) this year will depend on secondary equity markets and stability of oil prices.
However, local retail investors were increasingly profit takers and non-Qatari individuals turned bearish this week which saw as many as 80,150 sovereign bonds valued at QR793.21mn change hands across four transactions.
The market witnessed a total volume of 0.02mn QATR (Masraf Al Rayan sponsored exchange traded fund or ETF) valued at QR0.58mn trade across 47 deals and as many as 4,260 QETF (Doha Bank sponsored ETF) valued at QR0.44mn change hands across 16 transactions this week which saw no trading of treasury bills.
The Total Return Index shot up 2.97%, All Share Index by 3.85% and Al Rayan Islamic Index (Price) by 3.19% last week which saw the Washington-based Institute of International Finance forecast that Brent to average $65 this year against $71.8 in 2018, thus leading the Gulf economies to slow down to 2% in 2019 compared to 2.3% estimated for the previous year.
The realty index soared 8.76%, industrials (4.7%), insurance (4.4%), consumer goods (4.01%), transport (2.93%), banks and financial services (2.29%) and telecom (0.64%) this week which saw industrials, banking and real estate segments together account for more than 78% of total trade volume.
The industrials index constituted 34% of the total volume, banks and financial services (27%), real estate (18%), telecom (11%), consumer goods (6%), transport and insurance (3% each); while in terms of trade turnover, banks and financial services’ share was 34%, industrials (29%), real estate (15%), consumer goods (8%), telecom (7%), insurance (4%) and transport (3%) this week.
Foreign institutions’ net buying grew significantly to QR217.77mn against QR93.2mn the previous week.
Domestic funds turned net buyers to the tune of QR16.19mn compared with net sellers of QR48.69mn a week ago.
However, Qataris net selling grew substantially to QR221.15mn against QR49.15mn the week ended January 3.
Non-Qataris were net profit takers to the extent of QR12.8 compared with net buyers of QR5.24mn the previous week.
Total trade volume more than doubled to 71.85mn shares and value also more than doubled to QR1.47bn on 70% growth in transactions to 38,073 this week.
The consumer goods sector’s trade volume more than quadrupled to 4.09mn equities and value more than tripled to QR119.95mn on more than doubled deals to 2,389.
The banks and financial sector’s trade volume more than quadrupled to 19.13mn stocks and value more than doubled to QR501.86mn on more than doubled transactions to 8,600.
The insurance sector’s trade volume more than tripled to 1.81mn shares and value almost quadrupled to QR64.92mn on almost tripled deals to 1,152.
The telecom sector’s trade volume more than tripled to 7.7mn equities and value more than doubled to QR100.99mn on more than doubled transactions to 2,677.
The real estate sector’s trade volume more than doubled to 12.02mn stocks and value also more than doubled to QR214.64mn on more than doubled deals to 5,267.
The transport sector’s trade volume more than doubled to 1.88mn shares and value also more than doubled to QR48.15mn on almost doubled transactions to 1,823.
The industrials sector reported 57% surge in trade volume to 24.22mn equities, 64% in value to QR420.88mn and 25% in deals to 16,165.

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