KUWAIT CITY, 9 March 2006 — Hundreds of disgruntled Kuwaiti investors protested peacefully outside the emirate’s stock exchange yesterday as the bourse index recorded its largest single-day drop.
The Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) Index closed the day’s trading down 257.8 points or 2.4 percent on the previous day’s close, but at one point lost about 450 points, four percent, its biggest drop in one day of trading. KSE Index finished the week through yesterday at 10,705 points, down 6.7 percent on last week’s close of 11,467.50 points. The Index has not gained since Feb. 21.
The protesters, mostly small investors who lost heavily over the past four weeks, accused “big players” of deliberately causing the index to dive. “Leading stock holders are selling for profit-taking after they had bought at cheap prices. They are badly hurting us, the small investors,” investor Mohammed Yussef said.
“This is robbery. I have lost today some 20,000 dinars ($70,000). This is unfair. Major cartels are playing with the bourse for political reasons,” said Ibrahim Al-Fadhli. The index is now 6.5 percent below its 2005 close of 11,445.10 points, and down 11.2 percent from its all-time high of 12,054.70 points set Feb. 7.
Protesters called on the government to intervene to stop the slide because it will harm thousands of small investors. But Commerce and Industry Minister Yussef Al-Zalzalah described the slide in the bourse as “normal,” and said the government would intervene only when necessary. “The government will intervene to resolve any crisis in the bourse only when it happens and without haste,” Zalzalah told reporters in Parliament.
The Index dived below the 11,000-point psychological barrier Tuesday as the market reeled due to a correction and lack of liquidity, an analyst said.
Other Gulf bourses in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have suffered heavy losses since the start of the year. Amman also saw protests by stock investors on Tuesday when the Jordanian stock exchange fell by 4.5 percent. Jordanian stocks rebounded strongly over the past couple of days after a record plunge that prompted the Jordan Securities Commission (JSC) to adopt a number of measures to correct the situation.
These included allowing banks and other shareholding firms to buy back a certain percentage of their stocks, dealers said. The all-share price index of the Amman Stock Exchange gained 4.78 percent yesterday, closing at 7,260 points.