AMMAN, 21 September 2003 — Middle East stocks are expected to score fresh gains in the coming weeks despite this week’s profit-taking sell-offs at the Jordanian and Saudi bourses, analysts said Friday.
“Despite this week’s profit-taking moves, we expect Jordanian shares and other regional stocks to advance further in the coming weeks with the acceptance of the Iraq Governing Council at international organizations,” Wajdi Makhamreh, head of trading at the Atlas Investment Group said.
Makhamreh and other analysts attributed the ASE sell-off on Tuesday and Wednesday this week to “a natural profit-taking move, whereby a large number of investors liquidated their positions after prices hit record highs for several days”.
“There is a lot of liquidity in the market which seeks investment at the bourse because low interest rates prompts investors not to be put their money in bank deposits,” an analyst said.
The ASE general price index lost 0.76 percent in the trading week to close at 240.06 points down on Thursday from last week’s close at 240.82 points, according to the market’s weekly report.
Saudi Arabia’s stock market suffered a bad week. Saudi shares closed the week Thursday 4.2 percent down after a partial recovery from their sharpest single-day drop of 6.5 percent on Monday, Bakheet Financial Advisers (BFA) said.
The Tadawul All-Shares Index (TASI) finished the week at 4,371.27 points, down from last Thursday’s closing of 4,563.21 points, which marked a new high.
The TASI, which climbed above the psychological 4,000-point barrier in mid-August, is now up 73.6 percent on the year.
The Saudi bourse began a steady rise in March driven by strong oil prices which greatly boosted public revenues, and abundant cashflow, which combined to boost investor confidence.
The sharp decline on Monday was “expected where the market is overheating, reflecting on the unjustified high level of many stocks ... due to speculative trading,” Riyadh-based BFA said.
In Kuwait, the KSA index closed at 4,202.9 points, up 6.5 percent from 4,175.5 last week.
The bourse in Qatar experienced a strong surge of around nine percent in the last week, with the CBQ index closing at 649.01 points, compared to 714.72 points last week.
In Oman, the MSM index registered a slight increase, closing at 256.18 points, up from 251.11 last week.
In the United Arab Emirates, the NBAD index closed at 4,300.50 points, a slight decrease from the 4,317.87 registered last week.
In Bahrain, the BSE index stayed virtually unchanged, closing at 2,053.50 points, compared to 2,053.85 points last week.
In Egypt, the CASE 30 index closed at 920 points, up seven percent from 859.15 points last week.
