Foreign institutions continued to be net buyers, albeit with lesser vigour, as the Qatar Stock Exchange added 362 points and capitalisation gained QR20bn this week which saw the Qatar Financial Markets Authority come out with procedures to regulate stock split of listed firms.

Insurance, telecom and consumer goods counters witnessed higher-than-average demand this week, which saw the International Monetary Fund view that solid profitability, robust capital base, lower bad loans and adequate provisioning helped Qatar's banking sector withstand severe macroeconomic shocks.
Domestic institutions’ weakened net selling also helped the 20-stock Qatar Index surge 4.08% this week which saw Commercial Bank's $500mn five-year bond oversubscribe two-fold.
About 73% of the traded constituents extended gains this week, which saw solid growth in both output and incoming new business, alongside a return to job creation, thus helping improve Qatar's non-hydrocarbon private sector business conditions this May.
The Islamic stocks were seen gaining slower than the conventional ones this week, which saw Fitch, an international credit rating agency, revise upward Qatar's outlook to "stable" from "negative" and affirmed its long term foreign currency issuer default rating at 'AA-'.
The market witnessed a total volume of 0.31mn QATR (Masraf Al Rayan-sponsored exchange traded fund or ETF) valued at QR6.78mn trade across 517 transactions and as many as 0.1mn QETF (Doha Bank-sponsored ETF) valued at QR9.34mn change hands across 69 deals this week which saw no trading of treasury bills and sovereign bonds.
The Total Return Index soared 4.07%, All Share Index 4.13% and Al Rayan Islamic Index (Price) by 3.27% this week which saw Fitch expects Qatar not to tap the global markets for funds in the near future as public sector liquidity injections stabilised the banking sector and stemmed the outflow of non-resident funds.
The insurance index shot up 12.46%, telecom (8.79%), consumer goods (4.82%), banks and financial services (3.84%), industrials (2.98%), realty (2.89%) and transport (0.66%) this week which saw Nakilat, Commercial Bank and QNB dominate trading ring in terms of volume and value.
Major gainers included Qatar Insurance, Ooredoo, Medicare Group, Mazaya Qatar and Qatar Islamic Bank; even as Milaha, Salam International Investment, Al Khaleej Takaful, Gulf Warehousing and Qatar Industrial Manufacturing were among the loses this week which saw banking and transport sectors together accounted for more than 54% of total trade volumes.
The banking and financial services sector accounted for 29% of the total trading volume, transport (25%), industrials (14%), telecom (13%), real estate (9%), insurance (6%) and consumer goods (4%) this week.
The banks and financial sector’s share in total trade turnover was 53%, industrials (14%), transport (11%), telecom, insurance and consumer goods (6% each), and realty (3%) this week.
Domestic funds’ net selling weakened considerably to QR202.48mn compared to QR612.7mn a week ago.
Non-Qatari institutions’ net buying declined substantially to QR705.15mn against QR830mn the previous week.
Local retail investors’ net profit booking grew significantly to QR441.07mn compared to QR200.01mn the week ended May 31.
Non-Qatari individuals’ net selling expanded influentially to QR61.36mn against QR17.29mn a week ago.
Total trade volume fell 38% to 62.05mn shares, value by 59% to QR2.36bn and transactions by 23% to 29,358.
The banks and financial services sector’s trade volume plummeted 51% to 18.14mn equities, value by 69% to QR1.25bn and deals by 37% to 10,731.
The transport sector reported 49% plunge in trade volume to 15.52mn stocks, 48% in value to QR254.42mn and 32% in transactions to 4,509.
The industrials sector’s trade volume tanked 42% to 8.39mn shares, value by 66% to QR326.8mn and deals by 32% to 5,681.
The real estate sector saw 17% shrinkage in trade volume to 5.75mn equities and 7% in value to QR79mn but on 5% jump in transactions to 2,088.
The telecom sector’s trade volume was down 2% to 8.09mn stocks, whereas value grew 1% to QR148.35mn and deals by 23% to 2,612.
However, the insurance sector’s trade volume more than tripled to 3.95mn shares and value almost quadrupled to QR150.06mn on more than doubled transactions to 1,500.
The consumer goods sector’s trade volume soared 77% to 2.21mn equities to more than double value to QR151.5mn on 65% increase in deals to 2,237.

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