The Palestinian and Egyptian bourses slumped for the second week in a row, in a mixed end to February for stock markets in the Arab world, Bakheet Financial Advisors (BFA) reported on Saturday, March 3. Out of 12 markets in the BFA's weekly survey of the region, five were up and the other seven down.
The best performer of the week was the BLOM index in Lebanon, which gained 2.1 percent to close at 529.94 points, due to sharp gains in the Beirut downtown reconstruction venture Solidere.
The Jerusalem bourse of the Palestinians plunged 3.7 percent to 186.97 points, as clashes with Israel entered a sixth month.
As investors fretted over the regional impact of Turkey's financial crisis, the Hermes Financial Index in Egypt lost a hefty 3.4 percent to 6,724.88.
BFA said another big loser was the Tunindex in Tunisia, pushed down 3.0 percent to 1,331.94 as investors sold blue chips ahead of a pharmaceutical IPO.
Among the week's winners, the Saudi NCFEI index climbed 1.5 percent to 2,268.54 as banking and cement stocks gained ground, while the CSE in Morocco advanced 1.3 percent to 704.62 on healthy economic indicators.
Kuwait's KSE rose 0.9 percent to 1,380.30 and the Amman Stock Exchange index inched up 0.1 percent to close on 138.14.
Among the losers in the Gulf, Qatar's CBQ and the MSM in Oman both went down 2.3 percent, closing at 203.95 and 192.46, respectively. The MSM was affected by a downturn in the banking sector.
In the United Arab Emirates, the NBAD lost a slight 0.5 percent to 2,514.58, while the Bahraini BSE index slipped 0.2 percent to 1,600.36.
The worst performer of the year so far is Egypt's bourse, having lost 12.2 percent, while the best is the CSE index in Morocco, which has gained seven percent. —(AFP)
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
