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Tadawul Falls, Bank Shares Rise

Tadawul Falls, Bank Shares Rise
Tadawul Falls, Bank Shares Rise

Saudi Arabia’s stock market edged down Thursday in modest volumes. Tadawul All-Share Index fell 0.3% to 6,629 points, stalling near technical resistance at the July peak of 6,703 points. Volume was the lowest in a week.

Some banks fell as investors booked profits; National Commercial Bank dropped 0.5% to SR41 ($10.93), and is now roughly at par to the SR42.14 mean fair value of analysts polled by Reuters.

The banking sub-index has soared 28% over the past 30 days.

But the market is now again starting to look more expensive than the MSCI emerging market index: it is at a 2017 price-to-earnings ratio of about 14.1 times, against roughly 13 times for MSCI’s index.

Abu Dhabi’s main index edged up 0.04% as Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank added 0.7%, after it gained 5.8% on Wednesday. But Union National Bank lost 0.5% after jumping 12.3%, and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank was flat after rising 4.7%.

Dubai’s main index added 1.4% with activity focusing on smaller shares usually traded by local speculative investors. Investment firm Shuaa Capital soared 12.2%.

Dubai Financial Market closed 3.7% higher. Shares in the only listed exchange in the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council Arab states came under selling pressure earlier this week after index compiler MSCI said it planned to delete the stock from its standard index.

The Cairo blue chip index jumped 2% as a record 770 million shares traded hands, bringing its gains to 32% since the Egyptian pound was floated on Nov. 3.

Bourse data showed foreign investors remained net buyers of Egyptian equities on Thursday to the tune of about $8 million; they have been net buyers every day since the float.

 

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