Mubasher: The Muscat Securities Market (MSM) benchmark index went down 0.71% or 41.82 points this week, closing at 5818.14 points, pushed down by Arab and foreigner investors’ selling.

The market value declined around OMR 21 million ($54.55 million) closing at OMR 17.07 billion ($44.34 billion) in the week that ended Thursday, 21 July.

The Sharia index dropped 1.1%, closing at 884.63 points, compared to 894.51 points last week.

The financial sector slipped 0.87%, the services sector 0.84%, and the industrial sector 0.64%.

Overall, traded volume went up 9.39% to 73.66 million shares, compared to 67.01 million shares traded last week.

Traded value increased as well by around 21.18% to OMR 17.45 million ($45.32 million), compared to OMR 14.48 million ($37.61 million) last week.

Al Jazeera Steel Products led gainers, going up 9.91%, while Muscat Gases was the biggest loser this week with an 8.56% decline.

Renaissance Services had the biggest traded volume and value, with 63.07 million shares exchanged, representing approximately 46.05% of the MSM’s total traded volume. The stock saw a turnover of OMR 9.5 million ($24.68 million), accounting for 35.14% of the total turnover.

National and gulf investors buying netted OMR 314,400 ($816,622), and OMR 482,920 ($1.25 million), respectively.

On the other hand, Arab and foreigner investors had a tendency to sell, netting OMR 65,640 ($170,493) and OMR 731,550 ($1.9 million) respectively.