Saudi Arabia's stock market snapped a five-day winning streak on Tuesday as most banks dropped, while Kuwait rose for a fourth straight session after MSCI announced it would upgrade Kuwaiti equities to its main emerging-markets index.
The Saudi index was down 0.2% with Al Rajhi Bank shedding 0.7% and Samba Financial Group falling 1.5%.
That comes after five days of gains, and the index is still up 12.6% this year, led by foreign investors.
Saudi exchange data released late on Monday showed foreigners bought a net 16.16 billion riyals
($4.31 billion) worth of Saudi stocks last month.
Three of five tranches of Saudi stocks have joined the FTSE emerging-market index this year and completed the first phase of joining the MSCI emerging-market benchmark in May. A second phase is due in August.
Kuwait's index rose 1%. Last week, index compiler MSCI said it would move Kuwaiti equities to its main emerging-markets index in 2020, a move that could trigger billions of dollars of inflows.
Kuwait has outperformed its Gulf peers in anticipation of the MSCI move, gaining 22.5% year-to-date.
Middle Eastern funds plan to continue increasing their investments in Kuwait over the next three months, a Reuters poll found earlier this week.
Egypt's blue-chip index was up 0.3% with Pioneers Holding Company for Financial Investments gaining 3.5% after unit Arab Dairy Products received an acquisition offer from GC Equity Partners Fund.
Private equity firm Qalaa Holdings edged up 0.3% after posting a narrower first-quarter loss.
Qatar's index edged up 0.2% with banks leading the way. Qatar Islamic Bank advanced 1.2% and Doha Bank leapt 4.3%.
The index has gained in recent sessions as a 10-to-one stock split for companies on the exchange is being phased in from June 9 and will be completed by July 7. The move has been designed to boost liquidity by encouraging smaller investors to buy shares.
In Dubai, the index was up 0.2%, lifted in part by a 0.7% rise in market heavyweight developer Emaar Properties. It said Dubai Aerospace Enterprise had bought back the company's shares for $107 million.
Emaar Malls gained 0.5%. The firm said Chief Executive Officer Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne had resigned and Natalie Bogdanova was taking over the role.
The Abu Dhabi index traded flat with Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank adding 0.6%.
Comments
Comments are closed.