An investor walks through the Dubai Financial Market in Dubai, United Arab Emirates November 8, 2020. REUTERS/Christopher Pike/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
Nov 10 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s stock market ended slightly lower on Sunday after a fall in oil prices at the end of last week, while banking shares helped lift Qatar’s benchmark index.
Saudi Arabia’s benchmark index
fell 0.2% in a choppy trade, hit by a 4.6% fall in ACWA Power Company
and a 3.3% decline in Saudi Arabian Mining Co
.
Oil prices – a catalyst for the Gulf’s financial markets – settled more than 2% lower on Friday as traders grew less fearful of prolonged supply disruptions from a hurricane in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, while China’s latest economic stimulus packages failed to impress some oil traders.
Deflationary pressures in the Chinese economy have been a heavy drag on oil prices this year, with customs data showing a sixth consecutive month of year-over-year declines in the country’s crude oil imports for October.
Separately, the general chief of staff of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces, Fayyad al-Ruwaili, will visit Tehran on Sunday to meet with his Iranian counterpart and discuss defence ties, Iran’s state media reported the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff as saying.
The Qatari index
– which resumed trading following a two day break – gained 0.5%, with Qatar Islamic Bank
advancing 1.1% and the Gulf’s biggest lender Qatar National Bank
was up 0.4%.
Outside the Gulf, Egypt’s blue-chip index
added 0.4%, with top lender Commercial International Bank
rising 1.4%.
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Reporting by Ateeq Shariff in Bengaluru; Editing by Susan Fenton
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