Shares on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) showed a weak trend at the end of September 2020, with the MSM 30 Index falling by 10% to close at 3,614.6 points from 4,017.7 points for the same period of 2019.
Among different sub-sectors, manufacturing sub-index plunged by 10.3% to 3,949 points at the end of September 2020, compared to 4,405 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 11% to 5,833 points by the end of September 2020 from 6,558 points in the same month of 2019. Similarly, services sub-sector index fell 19.8% to 1,564 points at the end of September 2020 compared to 1,951 points in 2019, the NCSI data show.
Further, the market turnover at MSM fell 39.4% to OMR330.45 million in the nine months of 2020, from OMR545 million for the same period of 2019.
In addition, the net purchase of Omani investors on the Muscat bourse was at OMR26.77 million at the end of September 2020, the NCSI report showed.
However, there was a rise in the net purchase of GCC investors by OMR3.97 million and a fall in the net purchase of Arab by OMR3.74 million at the end of September 2020. Other foreign investors were also net sellers to the extent of OMR27 million worth of shares at the end of September 2020, against OMR2.41 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 39.6%, reaching 1.75 billion at the end of September 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.