Shares on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) showed a weak trend at the end of August 2020, with the MSM 30 Index falling by 5.8% to close at 3,771.9 points from 4,004.9 points for the same period of 2019.
Among different sub-sectors, manufacturing sub-index plunged by 9.3% to 4,001 points in August 2020, compared to 4,412 points for the same period of 2019, according to the latest monthly statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
The financial services sub-index fell by 6.2% to 6,126 points by the end of August 2020 from 6,534 points in the same month of 2019. Similarly, services sub-sector index fell 15.7% to 1,579 points in August 2020 compared to 1,874 points in 2019, the NCSI data show.
Further, the market turnover at MSM fell 38.5% to OMR307.5 million in the 8 months of 2020, from OMR500 million for the same period of 2019.
In addition, the net purchase of Omani investors on the Muscat bourse was at OMR27.31 million in August 2020, the NCSI report showed.
However, there was a rise in the net purchase of GCC investors by OMR1.46 million and a fall in the net purchase of Arab by OMR3.87 million at the end of August 2020. Other foreign investors were also net sellers to the extent of OMR24.90 million worth of shares in August 2020, against OMR4.03 million for the same period of the previous year.
The data also showed that there was a fall in total number of shares traded on the local bourse by 36.9%, reaching 1.64 billion in August 2020.
In 2019, the Muscat bourse closed with the MSM 30 Index ending at 3,981.2 points, while the market turnover stood at OMR711.55 million.