Sale-for-profit, speculation lead Kuwait bourse to red zone

The Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) ended last week in the red zone, for the first time in 2013, driven by strong sale-for-profit operations and traders' speculative behavior, a specialized economic report showed Saturday. The weekly report, by Bayan Investment Company, disclosed that the price index ended last week with a decrease that amounted to 3.28 percent, and the weighted index retreated by 1.50 percent compared to the closings of the week before. In addition KSX-15 index decreased by 1.23 percent. "Furthermore, last week's average daily turnover decreased by 22.37 percent, compared to the preceding week, reaching K.D 92.78 million, whereas trading volume average was 1.09 billion shares, recording decrease of 10.11 percent," reads the report. Kuwait Stock Market shed last week after strong sale-for-profit operations, in a highly unstable performance and in light of the large speculative operations of most last week's sessions. As a result, all the market indices closed in the red zone for the first time of this year. "In addition, the market initiated last week's activity with large losses for all its indicators, especially the Price Index which dropped in the first session of the week to its lowest in one day since almost the mid of 2009, where its losses exceeded 3 percent, in light of the significant decrease in cash liquidity; therefore the trading value dropped by more than 50 percent by the end of this session." The report, however, described the decline as important equity-price correction movement. "Despite the indices strong losses of last week, this action was considered important and needed and expected, especially after the big jumps in many of the listed stocks prices since late of last year and up to date, which increased the gap between the main indices, thus needed a correction action to tighten this gap," added the report. For the annual performance, the price index ended last week recording 35.28 percent annual gain compared to its closing in 2012, while the weighted index increased by 12.25 percent, and the KSX-15 recorded 8.80 percent increase. By the end of the week, the price index closed at 8,027.98 points, down by 3.28 percent from the week before closing, whereas the weighted index registered a 1.50 percent weekly loss after closing at 468.82 points. Moreover, the KSX-15 index closed at 1,097.84 points, decreasing with 1.23 percent. With regard to the performance of the different sectors, Bayan report said that ten of KSE's sectors ended last week in the red zone, while the other two recorded increases. "The Insurance sector headed the losers list as its index declined by 5.45 percent to end the week's activity at 1,152.35 points. The Financial Services sector was second on the losers' list, which index declined by 5.22 percent, closing at 1,179.97 points, followed by the Telecommunications sector, as its index closed at 923.61 points at a loss of 4.63 percent. The Oil Gas sector was the least declining as its index closed at 1,213.72 points with a 1.63 percent decrease. "On the other hand, last week's highest gainer was the Technology sector, achieving 2.77 percent growth rate as its index closed at 1,183.91 points. Whereas, in the second place, the Health Care sector's index closed at 1,130. 74 points recording 0.79 percent increase." Meanwhile, the data showed that the Financial Services sector dominated total trade volume during last week with 1.77 billion shares changing hands, representing 40.65 percent of the total market trading volume. The Real Estate sector was second in terms of trading volume as the sector's traded shares were 26.39 percent of last week's total trading volume, with a total of 1.15 billion shares. "On the other hand, the Financial Services sector's stocks were the highest traded in terms of value; with a turnover of K.D. 126.11 million or 33.98 percent of last week's total market trading value. The Real Estate sector took the second place as the sector's last week turnover of K.D. 104.12 million represented 28.05 percent of the total market trading value." In the meantime, Al-Shall Economic Consultants' weekly report noted that the performance of Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) for the last week was less active where all the indexes decreased, and AlShall Index decreased too. "AlShall Index (value weighted) closed at 467 points at the closing of last Wednesday (four trading days because of the Israa and Miraj holy day), showing a decrease of 8.3 points or about 1.7 percent compared to the end of the previous week, while increased by 28.8 points or about 6.6 percent compared to the end of 2012," reads Al-Shall report.