Monday 20 December 2010

Qatar Index Falls on Concern Gains Overdone; Barwa Retreats - BusinessWeek

Qatar’s benchmark index declined the most in almost on month, leading a drop in Persian Gulf markets, on speculation gains this year are overdone and as tension between North and South Korea escalated.

Barwa Real Estate Co., the nation’s biggest publicly traded property developer by assets, dropped the most since May and Commercial Bank of Qatar fell to the lowest in two weeks. The QE Index slid 1.2 percent, the most since Nov. 23, to 8,631.16 at the 12:30 p.m. close in Doha. Qatar’s benchmark index has gained 24 percent this year, the best performing index among seven tracked by Bloomberg in the Gulf. The Bloomberg GCC 200 Index of companies in the region lost 0.4 percent at 2:41 p.m. in Dubai.

’’We’ll see several pullbacks towards the end of the year as institutional investors lock in gains,’’ said Amro Halwani a trader at Shuaa Capital PSC in Riyadh. ’’Some uncertainty regarding international markets is trickling into our region as investors continue to worry about seeing more bad news coming out of Europe and tension between the two Koreas persists.’’

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