-- - 29/4/2006

The Doha Securities Market (DSM) managed to put up a brave face on the last trading day of the week as it rose by a marginal 53 points to close at 9,142.45 yesterday, even as trading activities were dull in terms of volumes and values.

An across the board sluggish buying pressure lifted the 20-stock laden benchmark Qatar Share Index by 0.59% over the previous close of 9,089.07 points.

Market wealth improved by about QR2bn and breadth skewed towards upswings.

The huge gains made in the initial period of the 150-minute trading session was to a great extent contained by the bearish pressure on the latter part, thereby leading to benchmark gain only marginally.

Trading volumes plummeted by 23%, values were down by 32 and the number of transactions fell by 21%.

Industrial and banking sectors outperformed the QSI as their indices expanded by 0.84% and 0.62% respectively, while the indices of services and insurance rose by 0.37% each.

Of the 33 listed companies, 19 saw value appreciation, while 10 fell and four were unchanged.

Of the six-listed banks, only two saw value depreciation, while two of the five insurance companies saw its shares dipping.

In the case of six industries, two companies saw its shares fall and it was just four of the 16 services that lost value to investors.

Opening strong against the previous close of 9,089.07 points, the index rather took an erratic pattern of ups and down in the next 30 minutes after which it made a huge climb in the next 15 minutes. It then slightly weakened but only to recover and scale new heights to peak 9,166.17 points within the first 60 minutes of opening.

Then the benchmark lost its steam for a while and remained almost flat for the next 45 minutes and then suddenly dropped and continued to weaken to finally wind up at 9,142.45 points.

Market capitalisation (M-cap) improved to QR258.74bn against previous day’s level of QR257.23bn. About 3.76mn stocks worth QR207.25mn changed hands across 4,304 deals yesterday.

Major gainers were Qatar National Cement Company (+QR4.6 to QR145.5), Qatar Islamic Bank (+QR3.6 to QR226.1), QNB (+QR3.2 to QR245), Dlala (+QR1.8 to QR61.9) and International Islamic (+QR1.8 to QR270.1).

Active stocks were Nakilat (1.15mn shares traded), Barwa (782,683), Salam International Investments (598,160), Qatar Islamic Bank (171,225) and Qatar Meat & Livestock Company (134,354).