Shares on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) showed a weak trend at the end of August 2019, with the MSM 30 Index falling by 9.4% to close at 4,004.9 points from 4,419.3 points for the same period of 2018.
Among different sub-sectors, manufacturing sub-index plunged by 19.1% to 4,412 points in end of August 2019, compared to 5,453 points for the same period of last year, according to the latest monthly statistics released by the (NCSI). The financial services sub-index fell by 5.2% to 6,534 points in end of August 2019 from 6,892 points in the same month of 2018. Similarly, services sub-sector index fell 21.1% to 1,874 points in 2019 compared to 2,376 points in 2018, the NCSI data show. Further, the market turnover at MSM fell 13.4% to OMR500 million in the first eight months of 2019, from OMR577.4 million for the same period of 2018. At the end of August 2019, Omani investors accounted for 60% of the purchase value, compared to 6% for foreign investors, 33% for GCC and 1% for Arabs from other non-Gulf countries. The increase in buying of Omani investors from selling to record their net dealings of 12.528 million OMR, as well as foreign investors who recorded their net dealings of 4 million and 32 thousand OMR, while selling on the purchase of Arab investors to register a net negative number by 195 thousand OMR also increased sales GCC investors were net buyers of OMR 16.366 million.
The data also showed that there was a fall in total number of shares traded on the local bourse by 13.9%, reaching 2.61 billion in end August of 2019.
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