Amid an atmosphere of optimism, the Kuwait Stock Exchange continued to break historical records Thursday, achieving market gains of 385 million dinars — equivalent to 1.25 billion dollars — to settle above the 42 billion dinars level.

All market indices turned green, as the primary market index rose by 1% and the “general” index by 0.9%, on the impact of record trades worth more than 103 million dinars, driven by many factors, most notably the political breakthrough, high oil prices, and the reverse migration of Kuwaiti investors from real estate and deposits to stocks, in search of higher returns, as well as record growth in bank profits for the nine-month period.

For its part, foreign investments witnessed a noticeable increase, following Morgan Stanley’s recommendation for foreigners to increase their concentrations in the Kuwait Stock Exchange, knowing that their investments exceeded 5.1 billion dinars, while an atmosphere of optimism dominated the investment managers’ performance in the fourth quarter of this year and next year.

Attention remains focused on dividends in 2021, amid expectations that cash dividends will be generous within the banking sector and operating companies.

Since the beginning of this week, the market indices have begun to break down historical levels since the division of the market at the beginning of 2018, and the normative indicators three years before them, in light of the political breakthrough that the National Assembly witnessed with the second session.

The stock market witnessed a return to local investments from other sectors, especially real estate and deposits, after the record returns achieved by shares.

On the other hand, an atmosphere of optimism dominated investment managers with the performance of the fourth quarter and the next year, for many reasons, foremost of which is the political breakthrough, the rise in oil prices, and the record growth in bank profits in the nine months, taking into account that 8 banks announced their results that achieved a growth of 7.67 percent.

Thursday’s session witnessed the “Agility” share catching up with the Seniors Club, to be the first to join the ranks of the Dinar shares, while many other shares continued to crawl, as “NBK” closed at the level of 990.

Kuwait Finance House is among the largest companies by market capitalization in 60 countries, as it recorded 21.9 billion dinars last August, according to the “Visual Capitalist” report, citing market data from CompaniesMarketCap, TradingView and MarketScreener.

The list included the Saudi oil giant, Aramco, with a market value of $1.9 trillion, UAE Etisalat $58.7 billion, Qatar National Bank with $48.2 billion, and Bank Muscat with $4.2 billion.

The Visual Capitalist report said: “There are more than 60 stock exchanges in the world, each with a major company. We looked at the largest local company, since many of the largest companies in the world trade on multiple exchanges, and we converted the market capitalization into dollars.”

“Many of them are former monopolies or mega-conglomerates that have grown into the public space, such as South Africa’s Naspers and India’s Reliance Industries,” he added. Others are local subsidiaries of foreign companies, including Mexico’s Walmex, Chile’s Enel and Turkey’s QNB Finansbank.

What is most obvious, however, is the economic discrepancy. At a time when Apple and Saudi Aramco are worth trillions of dollars, the smallest companies we tracked, including the Cuba Panama Group and Oman’s Bank Muscat, are worth less than $5 billion. Meanwhile, finance and technology dominate the largest companies by market capitalization across the board

Al-Shall weekly report stated that by the end of August 2021, the fifth month of the current fiscal year 2021-2022 ended, and the average price of a barrel of Kuwaiti oil for the month of August amounted to about $71.4, which is higher by about $26.4 per barrel, or about 58.6% than the new hypothetical price in the current budget, which is $45 a barrel, is also $41.4 higher than the hypothetical price average for the previous fiscal year, which was $30 a barrel.

Al-Shall reported that the tables of the Central Bank of Kuwait indicate a few numbers that we believe are important, such as the transfers of workers abroad in 2020, which amounted to about 5.29 billion dinars, equivalent to about 17.3 billion dollars, compared to about 5.7 billion dinars in 2019 (- 7.3%).

It is assumed that Kuwait, with its public and private sectors, has achieved a surplus in its foreign investments amounting to about 6.47 billion dinars, compared to a surplus of about 9.43 billion dinars in 2019, and this surplus includes direct investments abroad by about 2.333 billion dinars. The summary of the tables indicates that the balance of payments achieved during the year 2020 a surplus of about 2.55 billion dinars, compared to a surplus during the year 2019 of about 817 million dinars.


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