(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Qatar Stock Exchange continued to be under bearish spell for the third day on Wednesday but overall it closed 2014 with a huge 1,906 points gains largely to become the best performer in the Gulf region.
The New Year 2015 is all set to be busy for the bourse with the expected introduction of more liquidity providers to further enhance market liquidity and ensure better price discovery as a precursor to allowing exchange of traded funds as well as launching margin trading with Qatar Financial Market Authority already giving a go-ahead for the scheme.
The bygone year, which saw the advent of Mesaieed Petrochemical Holding Company in the bourse, shot up 18.36% year-to-date on December 31, owing to buying interests in the insurance, banks, transport and consumer goods sectors.
In comparison, Bahrain gained 14.23%, Dubai 11.99% and Abu Dhabi 5.56%; whereas Kuwait sunk 13.43%, Muscat 7.19% and Saudi Arabia 2.37%.
The QSE, which was upgraded to 'emerging' market by both Morgan Stanley Composite Index and Standard & Poor's-Dow Jones, saw its notional wealth or capitalisation surge QR121bn with micro, small and mid cap stocks outperforming the main indices.
More than 72% of the stocks extended gains to investors during the year, which saw HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani allow a higher up to 49% foreign ownership limit in the listed companies, a move that had gone well with the foreign institutions, whose buying interests largely kept afloat the bullish buoyancy in the market.
The index that tracks Shariah-principled stocks was seen gaining much faster than the other indices in the market where exchange of traded funds was supposed to be launched but postponed due to some procedural delays.
The Total Return Index appreciated 23.56%, All Share Index by 21.77% and Al Rayan Islamic Index by 35.09% during the year that also saw the QSE draw up guidelines for a listing subsidy for the small and medium enterprises in the junior bourse or Venture Market.
The insurance stocks witnessed the maximum appreciation of 69.44%, banks and financial services (31.11%), transport (24.76%), consumer goods (16.13%), industrials (15.42%), real estate (14.92%) and telecom (21.9%) in 2014, which also saw the Qatar Financial Market Authority witness four requests for initial public offering but approval was granted only to Mesaieed Petrochemical Holding.
Micro, small, mid and large cap equities have gained 32.56%, 25.35%, 21.95% and 16.81% respectively so far in the year, which also saw QSE CEO Rashid bin Ali al-Mansoori disclose that the bourse is exploring the feasibility of introducing a platform through which privately held companies can raise capital from the market.
Trading volumes more than doubled to 4.44bn shares with real estate sector accounting for 33.27% of the total, followed by banks and financial services (24.61%), industrials (12.72%) and telecom (12.51%).
Trading value almost tripled to QR199.29bn with banks and financial services' share at 34.95%, industrials (21.77%), realty (19.57%) and consumer goods (9.69%).
Transactions more than doubled to 2.06mn with banks and financial services sector accounting for 28.85% of the total, industrials (26.48%), real estate (20.33%) and consumer goods (9.61%).
In the debt market, a total of 397,200 treasury bills valued at QR3.95bn were traded across 53 deals; while as many as 200,000 government bonds worth QR2.03bn changed hands across 25 transactions.
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