A decline in key shares triggered by post profit-taking sell-offs and other factors drained the pockets of equity investors in the oil-rich Gulf by nearly $60 billion (Dh220.2bn) in the first two weeks of August, official figures showed yesterday.
Despite some gains over the past three days, the UAE and Saudi Arabian stock exchanges emerged as the main victims of the fall, the biggest combined half-monthly loss in more than a year.
The figures by the Abu Dhabi-based Arab Monetary Fund (AMF), which tracks regional bourses through its common Arab Stocks Data Base, showed all other bourses in the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) declined between July 31 and August 14 after making modest gains in previous weeks.
From around $1.116 trillion on July 31, the combined market capitalisation of the seven bourses, including two in the UAE, plummeted to nearly $1.056trn on August 14, a loss of around $60bn in two weeks and an average $4.2bn a day, said the AMF, the Arab League's main financial institution.
Saudi Arabia's Tadawul, the largest and most speculative market in the Middle East, accounted for nearly half the total losses, with its market capitalisation diving by around $30bn from $454.37bn to $423.85bn.
The UAE's Dubai and Abu Dhabi exchanges declined by around $16bn from $260.72bn to $244.79bn in the same period. Abu Dhabi suffered more, with its losses standing at nearly $11bn.
Kuwait, the third largest stock market in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia and the UAE, dipped by around $7bn from $206.12bn to $199.66bn, while Qatar lost around $4bn. Oman and Bahrain, which are relatively small and less speculative exchanges in the Gulf, also recorded declines.
Despite the losses, some GCC markets have remained gainers so far this year, mainly Qatar, whose market capitalisation jumped by nearly $37bn on August 14 from around $95bn on January 1.
The AMF report showed the GCC's combined turnover, or the value of traded shares, totalled around $18.2bn during the first two weeks of August.
Saudi Arabia's turnover of around $10bn accounted for 55 per cent of the total while the UAE had the second largest turnover, with the combined value of shares traded in Dubai and Abu Dhabi standing at $3.8bn. The value stood at nearly $2.8bn in Kuwait, $1.16bn in Qatar, and around $282 million and $45m in Oman and Bahrain respectively.
The total turnover in the first two weeks of August is dwarfed by the value in previous months, when it stood at around $62bn in July and $90bn in June. It was as high as $98bn in January.