By Mahmoud Gamal:

Doha-Mubasher: The Qatar Exchange (QE) benchmark shut Thursday’s session in the negative territory, amid selling pressures on telecom, bank and industrial stocks.

The benchmark index lost 0.68% or 81.03 points to close at 11899.63 points; thus reversing a two-session uptrend. The all share index fell 0.58% to 3062.23 points.

The market saw strong selling on three leading sectors, namely telecoms, industrials and real estate, which pushed the index below the 11900 level, said Ahmed Farouk, financial analyst.

The real estate sector was the biggest loser (-1.26%), as it was weighed by Ezdan (-1.5%) and Barwa (-1.23%).

The banks sector also sagged 0.93% after QNB went down by 1.5%. The telecommunications sector lost 0.88% hurt by Vodafone Qatar (-3.8%) that posted lower loss for the first nine months of FY14.

According to the analyst, the real estate stocks were the worst performers as they saw pressures from speculators.

Furthermore, the index went down due to the drop of its main constituent stocks like QNB and Ezdan, the analyst added.

Meanwhile, three sectors bucked the index trend; services (+0.86%), services (+0.59%) and insurance (+0.31%).

Market capitalization lost QAR 4.3 billion to reach QAR 648.78 billion.

Thursday’s turnover fell to QAR 374.50 million from QAR 504.42 million, while traded volume declined to nearly 8.48 million shares from 11.76 million shares.

QNB was the most active with turnover exceeding QAR 39.81 million, while Ezdan came on top with traded volume reaching 2.29 million shares.

Foreign traders were net sellers by QAR 42.4 million, while foreign institutions were net sellers by QAR 52.9 million.

Nationals were net buyers by QAR 46.8 million.

Translated by Sayed Abdulrahman

Photo Credit: Arabianeye-Reuters