The Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) crashed 4.7 percent on Saturday, September 15, the first day of trading since the wave of terror attacks in the United States, in the index's biggest one-day loss this year.
The KSE index closed at 1,690.1 points, down 82.7 points from Tuesday. Trading was suspended on Wednesday, a day after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. There is no trading over the Thursday-Friday weekend.
Saturday's drop was the largest on a single day of trading this year. Analysts told AFP the crash was due to psychological factors and that the market will rebound because of the strength of the Kuwaiti economy.
Despite today's drop, the KSE is still 25.3 percent up since the start of 2001, during which Kuwaiti shares made a spectacular recovery after three years of decline. The market has boomed over the past few months, with the index rallying past the 1,700-point barrier for the first time since December 1998 after dropping to a five-year low in January.
The rise was attributed to a number of government economic reform decisions and strong prices of oil, which supplies the emirate's budget with 90 percent of its revenues. The KSE is the second largest in the Arab world in terms of capitalization after Saudi Arabia's NCFEI index. ― (AFP, Kuwait City)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
