Saudi stocks fall, real estate firms boost Dubai

Saudi Arabia’s stock market dropped Thursday after oil prices slipped again, as real estate developers boosted the Dubai and Egyptian bourses.

Brent crude tumbled nearly 4 percent overnight, to back below $50 a barrel. This undermined petrochemical stocks including Saudi Basic Industries, which lost 1.5 percent.

Saudi International Petrochemical Co (Sipchem) dropped 2.9 percent after saying it might not pay a dividend for the second half of 2015, despite seeing results from a restructuring intended to cope with cheap oil.

The Saudi stock index fell 1.1 percent to 6,961 points, near technical support at the August low of 6,921 points.

Saudi Printing and Packaging Co, a focus of the market as it soared 59 percent over the past five trading days, showed signs of peaking. It rose in early trade but heavy selling pushed it down 10 percent by the close.

Investor sentiment in Saudi Arabia was weakened by Standard & Poor’s downgrade of Saudi sovereign debt at the end of last week, and by a purchasing managers’ survey on Tuesday showing private sector growth at its slowest since 2009.

Other Gulf markets performed better. Dubai’s index rose 0.7 percent as real estate blue chips climbed 2.2 percent, though trade was thin.

Abu Dhabi’s index was almost flat while Qatar dropped 0.6 percent, as petrochemical maker Industries Qatar slid 1.6 percent.

THURSDAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

SAUDI ARABIA

* The index fell 1.1 percent to 6,961 points.

DUBAI

* The index rose 0.7 percent to 3,451 points.

ABU DHABI

* The index edged down 0.02 percent to 4,263 points.

QATAR

* The index fell 0.6 percent to 11,439 points. 

EGYPT

* The index rose 1.2 percent to 7,542 points.

KUWAIT

* The index edged down 0.1 percent to 5,771 points.

OMAN

* The index fell 0.4 percent to 5,919 points.

BAHRAIN

* The index edged down 0.1 percent to 1,250 points.

Source: Reuters