TEDPIX Growth Plateaus Over Past Trading Week

Tehran Stock Exchange’s main index TEDPIX shed 60 points or 0.1% during the week that ended on Dec. 5 to end at 91,092.4.

The main index of the smaller over-the-counter exchange Iran Fara Bourse shed 17.2 points or 1.7% during the week to stand at 1,030.5.

TEDPIX opened Saturday trade at its all-time high of 91,152.2 and cautious trading corrected the index to below 91,000. The market received a new lease of life on Tuesday, as new fortunes for commodities reversed the falling trend.

Observers say stocks’ growth so far has mostly been on the back of gains made by large-cap steelmakers and iron miners, as well as certain refineries.

This is while other determining industries such as automakers, cement producers and pharmaceuticals have barely moved in the past three years. As this week’s performance indicates, miners and refineries’ growth has so far prevented heavier corrections for TEDPIX, backed by further devaluation of rial against USD.

For the past two weeks, coal producers have been TSE’s main drivers with a 9.9% growth in their industry index, followed by metal ore producers with 7.7% and the “information and communications” index–with the large-cap ISP HiWeb as its sole listed firm–with 5%.

HiWeb returned to TSE trading last week after a month-long period of having its shares frozen over a recent merger agreement. Signed on Oct. 29, the agreement entailed a HiWeb merger with its rival Pars Online through absorption of all the latter’s shares, with the two companies operating under the HiWeb brand.

The Securities and Exchange Organization closed the company’s shares the same day, citing the deal’s insufficient financial details as the cause.

The 4-trillion-rial ($97.56 million) ISP resumed trading on Tuesday with a price fluctuation cap of 5%. Its shares grew 4.98% to 5,034 rials.

Over 3.67 billion shares valued at $233.3 million were traded on TSE during last week. The number of traded shares and trade value dropped by 30% and 11.3% respectively compared to the previous week.

IFX followed a fairly similar pattern, as it opened at the all-time high of 1,031, but its slight one-point upward jolt on Monday could not prevent the benchmark’s sharp drop the next day.

Trading at Iran’s stock markets starts on Saturday and ends on Wednesday. TSE and IFB were closed on Wednesday this week due to holidays.

TSE’s First Market Index shed 212 points or 0.32% to end at 64,744.3.

The Second Market Index rose by 1,077 points or 0.56% to close at 193,859.8.

At IFB, more than 1.15 billion securities valued at $202.6 million were traded. The number of traded shares dropped by 18% while trade value grew by 15% compared to the week before.

IFB’s market cap gained $116.9 million or 0.4% to reach $29.08 billion.

Its First Market witnessed the trading of 417 million securities valued at $18.82 million, indicating a 30% and 31% rise in the number of traded securities and trade value respectively.

About 272 million securities valued at $21.12 million were traded in the Second Market, with the number of traded securities and trade value dropping by 41% and 32% week-on-week respectively.

Over 6 million debt securities valued at $132.5 million were also traded at IFB, rising by 51% and 56% in the number of bonds traded and their value respectively.