DOHA: The Doha Securities Market (DSM) went on a free fall due to lack of buying support, mainly in the large-volume services as well as banking and financial institutions stocks in the week ended September 21 that saw big corporate announcements.

Despite the overall bearish sentiments, United Development Company, which is planning to set up two subsidiaries with a total capital base of over QR109mn, stole the limelight as its shares gained over 7% in the week.

Qatari investors’ selling spree outweighed that of non-Qataris so much so that only three of the 36 scrips could land some gains in the week that saw Nakilat announcing a $3bn order for 10 LNG ships.

With a comparatively marginal increase in volumes, the 20-stock benchmark Qatar Share Index lost 154 points to close at 7,600.54, knocking off QR5bn of (notional) wealth in the week.

Profit booking in the insurance and industrial sectors compounded investors’ worries as the QSI shrunk by 1.98% in the week that also saw Qatar Shipping pressing two sophisticated anchor handling tugs into service.

Analysts say that the current trend is likely to continue in the short to medium term as selling pressure weighs large in view of increased liquidity requirements because of Ramadan.

According to Doha Bank, though this year’s crash corrected key financial parameters such as price to earnings (PE) ratio to a realistic and globally accepted levels, it has made investors cautious.

Of the 36 entities, 31 reported losses, three rose and one was unchanged. One of seven industries and two of the 16 services scrips gained, while all of the eight banks and financial institutions and five insurers lost value to investors.

The services took the maximum hit as its index lost 2.53%, followed by banks and financial institutions (2%), insurance (1.92%) and industry (0.98%).

Trading volume rose by 3.73% to 35.41mn share in the review week against 34.14mn shares in the previous week, while values fell by 0.33% to QR1.11bn (QR1.12bn) and transactions shrunk by 22.9% to 33,555 (43,523).

The banking and financial institutions sector held the sway in terms of volumes and values as its shares accounted for 50.06% and 47.68% of the total respectively.

Banks and financial institutions stocks’ volume was 17.72mn against 12.08mn in the previous week, services 11.30mn (14.36mn), industry 6.21mn (7.54mn) and insurance 0.17mn (0.16mn).

Banking and financial institutions stocks’ values were QR531.08mn (QR443.46mn in the previous week), services QR329.08mn (QR383.80mn), industry QR234.20mn (QR272.32mn) and insurance QR19.51mn (QR18mn).

In terms of number of transactions, the banks and financial institutions sector again topped the chart with its shares accounting for 44.16%, services with 32.11%, industry with 22.82% and insurance with 0.91%.

Banks and financial institutions’ transactions were 14,818 (against previous week’s 19,513), services 10,773 (13,208), industry 7,658 (10,420) and insurance 306 (382).

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