JEDDAH: Most Gulf stock markets were narrowly mixed as Qatar ran into profit-taking pressure above 10,000 points, pushing it down sharply.

In Saudi Arabia, where the main index rose 0.6 percent, some beaten-down petrochemical shares continued rebounding on recent firmness in oil prices and data suggesting Chinese demand was not as weak as feared.

Saudi Kayan climbed 0.8 percent to SR12.35, bringing its gain over the last four trading days to 9.8 percent.

It broke on Wednesday above the June peak of SR12.10, triggering a double bottom formed by the June and July lows and pointing up to the January peak of SR13.20.

Saudi Basic Industries Corp. rose 0.8 percent to its highest close since April 13, and PetroRabigh climbed 1.6%.

Both stocks have advanced in four of the last five sessions.

Buoyed by healthy second-quarter earnings, Qatar’s bourse exceeded 10,000 points on Wednesday for the first time since September 2008. But the index fell back 1.2 percent on Thursday to 9,887 points.

A Qatari trader said he saw no major fresh factors behind the pull-back.

“There were just a couple of trades on low volumes,” he said, adding that Qatar National Bank’s rise of 10 percent over the past month was a bullish signal for the market.

The market’s longer-term technical outlook is strong after its clean break last month above the January 2011 peak of 9,290 points, which coincided with the 61.8 percent retracement of the drop from June 2008. That left no major chart barrier before the June 2008 peak of 12,637 points.

One Qatari blue chip continued rising strongly on Thursday:

Qatar Gas Transport Co, which added 2.3 percent to 19.73 riyals.

On Wednesday, it broke major resistance on the June peak of 19 riyals; a bullish symmetrical triangle formed by the highs and lows dating back to early June points up to 20.20 riyals in coming weeks.

There was little corporate news to stimulate other Gulf markets and many investors have not returned from last week’s long Eid holiday.

Dubai lost 0.6 percent to 2,632 points, once again leaving it on top of support on an uptrend line from early July; any break would signal an end to its bull run in the short term, implying a pull-back to at least the mid-July peak of 2,576, the 23.6 percent retracement of the rise from early July.

One piece of corporate news may help Dubai next week, however: major construction firm Arabtec swung to a second-quarter net profit of AED92.4 million ($25.2 million), beating an average analyst forecast of AED51.5 million by a large margin.

The stock closed 2.8 percent lower before the earnings announcement, its second day of decline since hitting a near-six-month closing high on Tuesday.

Egypt’s bourse was closed as the country continued to grapple with political turmoil caused by the clearing of protest camps supporting deposed president by security forces.