Shares in cement companies led the Abu Dhabi benchmark to end 0.5 percent higher. RAK Cement Company surged 6.4 percent and Union Cement advanced 4.6 percent.

“Particularly among local investors, we’re seeing targeting of some of the smaller laggards; everyone is looking for the serial underperformers,” says Julian Bruce, EFG Hermes director of institutional equity sales.

“But we can’t see big institutional investors committing ahead of the weekend.”

Emirates Telecommunications Corp. (Etisalat) rose for the fourth consecutive session boosted by progress to buy a 46-percent stake in Kuwait’s Zain.

“The progress of the talks are going smoothly and (the deal) is expected to be finalized very soon,” said a source familiar with the deal, on Wednesday.

Shares in Zain fell 1.4 percent on Thursday, pulling the index 0.9 percent lower but still above the resistance level of 7,000 points at 7,011 points.

Two Omani banks reported quarterly earnings on Thursday, including the sultanate’s largest lender Bank Muscat, whose third quarter profit surged 26 percent, beating analysts’ forecasts. Shares ended flat.

Third quarter profit at Bank Dhofar  rose 5 percent and shares ended 0.5 percent higher but the index ended flat.

“Both banks went up before the results, so there is not much effect on the index,” said Adel Nasr at United Securities in Muscat.

“Following these earnings, more investments will be seen in Oman’s banking sector in in coming weeks,” said Nasr. “For now, investors will wait for the remaining earnings to be announced.”

In Qatar too, heavyweight Industries Qatar reported better than expected earnings, with third quarter profit up nearly 30 percent leading shares 0.7 percent higher but the gain made little impact on the benchmark, which ended almost flat.

Bahrain’s index, Egypt’s index and Dubai’s benchmark ended lower.

Dubai bourse retreated 0.7 percent to 1,747 points while Abu Dhabi’s benchmark  gained 0.5 percent to 2,759 points.

Egypt’s stocks dipped 0.31 percent to 6,879 points.