Qatari stocks rallied on the third straight trading day yesterday due to a gush of liquidity into the market that followed the government’s purchase of Qatari equity portfolios of local banks and bolstered investor confidence.
The benchmark index of the Doha Securities Market (DSM) zoomed beyond the psychological barrier of 5,000 points to 5,244 with an impressive 291 points, or 5.88 percent gain.
Banking counters led the rally as three of the eight listed banking entities, including Qatar National Bank, advanced more than nine percent. Most of the others gained over six percent. The sector on the whole alone advanced 7.32 percent.
In the services sector, Islamic Securities gained 10 percent. Top volume stocks belonged to Qatar Islamic Bank and Industries Qatar, among others. At the close of trading hours, 36 of the 43 listed stocks gained and only two fell while the remaining five did not witness any trading.
In the three days of continuous buoyancy, investors on the DSM have recovered more than QR17.5bn as the market capitalization improved dramatically to QR220.66bn due to large cap stocks appreciating.
“Liquidity has been the main driver of the index gain,” said Thamer Hasan, a financial and stock analyst. “There are other factors as well which are pepping up the market and one of them is a boost in investor confidence,” he told this newspaper.
According to him, stock markets in the region as well as the rest of the world were bullish yesterday. “This was also one of the factors which buoyed the trading sentiment on the DSM.”
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