Starting the new year on a bullish note, Qatari stocks have registered impressive gains in the first week of 2022. The Qatar Stock Exchange (QE) index has surged 334 points in the first week of this year.
A rise of 37 points yesterday helped the index to close at 11,959 points, very close to 12,000 mark.During last week, the stocks have maintained upward momentum driven on the optimism among investors despite rise of concerns regarding omicron cases.
Wednesday was the best day of the week for investors as QE index jumped 208 points, which was the highest gain of the week. Gains were led by the Industrials and Telecoms indices, gaining 2.7 percent each.
Top gainers were Ooredoo and Industries Qatar, rising 3.6 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively. Among the top losers, Qatar General Ins. & Reins. Co. was down marginally.
The index rose on the back of buying support from GCC and foreign shareholders despite selling pressure from Qatari and Arab shareholders.The QE Index had risen 0.4 percent on Tuesday to close at 11,713.8.
Gains were led by the Industrials and Consumer Goods & Services indices, gaining 0.7 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively. On Monday, the QE Index had risen 0.4 percent to close at 11,670.1.
Gains were led by the Indus-trials and Transportation indices, gaining 0.8 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively. Qatar’s stocks rallied in tandem with regional stock markets which rose tracking rising oil prices, as investors shrugged off impact of a rise in COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant.
Crude prices, a key catalyst for the Gulf’s financial markets, held near $80 a barrel after Opec+ producers stuck to an agreed output target rise for February.
Opec+ producers, which include members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries along with Russia and others, on Tuesday agreed to add another 400,000 barrels per day of supply in February, as they have done each month since August.
Trading value during this week accounted QR1.59bn and the trading volume reached 542.88 million with 39,400 transactions. Market capitali-sation reached QR679.58bn as com-pared to QR667.57bn at the end of pre-vious week.Banking and Financial Services sector increased 90.97 points, 1.83 percent, to 5,053.41 points and Con-sumer Goods and Services sector dropped 56.14 points, 0.68 percent, to 8,160.5 points.
Industries sector increased to 148.77 points, 3.70 percent, to 4,172.03 and the Insurance sector dropped 112.98 points, 4.14 percent, to 2,614.11 points. The Real Estate sector gained 55.76 points, 3.20 percent, to 1,795.93 points.
The Telecom sector increased 13.58 points, 1.28 percent, to 1,071.29 points and Transportation sector added 45.80 points, 1.29 percent, to 3,603.35 points.
