Shuaa Capital, the region’s leading financial services institution, today issued its October GCC Investor Sentiment Report, the only report of its kind for the Gulf markets.
The report draws together the submissions from international and regional institutional investors to formulate the Shuaa GCC Investor Confidence Index. The Index has been designed to provide the global investment community with a benchmark of investor confidence for GCC countries and track changes in investor behaviour over time.
Commenting on the Index findings Oliver Schutzmann, Chief Communications Officer of Shuaa Capital and Author of the Investor Sentiment Report, said:
“It is very encouraging to see the GCC Index on the rise for the third month running, and not far off its peak of 133.5 in June. The GCC Real Estate, Construction & Materials sector improved dramatically, turning positive for the first time since April 2009 after a significant jump from -13.7% to 13.7% of the balance of investors expecting a rise in profitability.”
Regarding investor sentiment towards the current state of GCC economies, Oliver Schutzmann commented, “The continued improvement in the GCC Investor Confidence Index was largely driven once again by the positive movement in the balance of investors’ perceptions of current regional economic conditions. In October this figure moved to 27.5% from 15.7% last month and a significant improvement on July’s recording of -15.0% in July.”
“Performing particularly well this month was the Saudi Arabian Investor Confidence Index which jumped the most, increasing 11.6% to 154.9. The Kingdom has performed consistently well in the Survey’s seven month history, and is once again leading the way in the region. Driving Saudi’s gain was investors’ opinion of the current state of its economy, which doubled in this month’s report to 51% from 25.5% in September,” added Schutzmann.
Finally, Oliver Schutzmann, discussed regional stock markets saying, “This month we asked investors if they would call a bottom in the various regional and global stock exchanges. They responded favourably towards the GCC markets, in particular Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul which had an on balance figure of 35.3%. Also performing well was the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange, Qatar Exchange and Oman Stock Market, which had on balance figures of 17.6%, 13.7% and 7.8% respectively. Meanwhile, the same could not be said for global exchanges; the Dow Jones, FT-SE and Eurostoxx all had a negative balance figures.”
