Boursa Kuwait ended last week with mixed performance. The Price Index closed at 6,854.27 points, up by 0.60% from the week before closing, the Weighted Index decreased by 0.74% after closing at 405.85 points, whereas the KSX-15 Index closed at 910.69 points declining by 1.37%. Furthermore, last week’s average daily turnover decreased by 28.18%, compared to the preceding week, reaching K.D 19.15 million, whereas trading volume average was 175.11 million shares, recording a drop of 39.43%.
The three market indices closed mixed by the end of last week, whereas the Price Index was able to record some gains supported by the purchasing and quick speculative operations, which is the trading mark for this period, however, none of the other two indices were able to move out of the loss zone, affected by the profit collection operations that were present also during some sessions.
As per the daily trading activity, the Boursa Kuwait initiated its first session of the last week with mixed closings for the three indices, whereas the Price Index recorded limited growth supported by the random purchasing operations on stocks of different sectors, while both the Weighted and KSX-15 indices recorded different losses affected by the strong selling pressures executed on the leading and heavy stocks, which caused the trading levels to drop steeply, especially the value, which declined by 40.88% to reach around K.D. 15.8 million, its lowest level since the beginning of 2017.
On the second session of the week, the three Boursa indices were able to reverse its direction and end its activity with a grouped increase, supported by the active trading on the low-priced stocks, in parallel with the return of the liquidity levels to improve relatively, supported by the activity witnessed by the idle and leading stocks. However on the mid-week session, the Boursa Kuwait returned to the negative performance to record grouped limited losses for the three indices, affected by the selling pressures and the profit collection operations executed on the small-cap and leading stocks, due to the absence of the traders and their refrain from trading, which caused the cash liquidity to drop.
On the last session of the week, the three market indices fluctuated to close mixed, where both the Price and Weighted indices were able to realize gains by the end of the session, affected by the active speculative operations on the small-cap and low-priced stocks, while the KSX-15 Index could not follow its peers and closed with losses, affected by the selling pressures on the leading and operational stocks, in light of a good appetite to trade, which caused the trading activity to increase, and resulted the cash liquidity to return to its end of the previous week’s levels.
Moreover, the market capitalization reached by the end of last week to K.D. 26.96 billion, down by 0.56% compared to its level in a week earlier, where it reached then K.D. 27.11 billion. On an annual level, the market cap for the listed companies in the Boursa Kuwait increased by 6.11% from its value at end of 2016, where it was then K.D. 25.41 billion.
For the annual performance, the Price Index ended last week recording 19.24% annual gain compared to its closing in 2016, while the Weighted Index increased by 6.78%, and the KSX-15 recorded 2.90% growth.
Sectors’ Indices
On the other hand, the Insurance sector headed the losers list as its index declined 1.90% to end the week’s activity at 1,051.63 points. The Technology sector was second on the losers’ list, which index declined by 1.70%, closing 705.97 points, followed by the Telecommunications sector, as its index closed at 624.55 points at a loss of 1.64%. The Banks sector was the least declining as its index closed at 936.57 points with a 0.46% decrease.
Sectors’ Activity
The Real Estate sector dominated a total trade volume of around 277.34 million shares changing hands during last week, representing 39.57% of the total market trading volume. The Financial Services sector was second in terms of trading volume as the sector’s traded shares were 32.78% of last week’s total trading volume, with a total of around 229.62 million shares.
On the other hand, the Banks sector’s stocks were the highest traded in terms of value; with a turnover of around K.D 23.50 million or 30.68% of last week’s total market trading value. The Real Estate sector took the second place as the sector’s last week turnover was approx. K.D 16.87 million representing 22.02% of the total market trading value.