Stock purchase appetite dwindling, Kuwait

The purchase appetite for stocks clearly dropped last week as many investors prefer to hold trading in summer, not to mention the holy month of Ramadan, an economic report showed here on Saturday. The weighted, price and KSX 15 indexes of the Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) closed up last week at 2.64 points, 12 points and 7.23 points respectively, said the report, released by Al Oula Financial Brokerage Company. As investors' purchase came on the basis of forecasts for the second quarter results, KSE-listed companies' expected findings are the main technical criteria for investors' orientations for the coming period and moves to revise their portfolios by the end of the second quarter, it said. The value of traded shares was below KD 20 million in the lowest trading value since the beginning of this year, the report added. The performance of the indexes was mixed in most sessions of last week which witnessed fluctuations pushed by speculations with dwindling liquidity, it said, noting that the reduction of trading time to only two hours has led to a drop in stock-trading. However, there was demand for some leading shares, bringing gains to the weighted and KSX indexes in some sessions, but the volume of trading remained poor, the report pointed out. It indicated high demand for cheap and medium-risk shares since the beginning of this year, as major investors still seek operating stocks to a large extent, it noted.