UAE bourses end March with gains on oil price rally

Dubai’s main stock index rose on Thursday as oil prices continued to rebound from their long rout. Emaar Properties, the biggest publicly traded real estate company in the UAE, led the gains.

The Dubai Financial Market General Index rose 0.9 per cent, taking its monthly gain to 5.6 per cent and its quarterly gain to 6.5 per cent amid a global rebound from a crash in January. The recent rally came after US Federal Reserve officials played down any rush to raise interest rates.

Oil prices are up 5.5 per cent since the beginning of the year, including 9.3 per cent in March alone, and traded as much as 1.4 per cent higher yesterday.

“Investors have already priced in the drop in oil prices and the next catalyst for the markets will be Opec’s meeting in April,” Tariq Qaqish, the head of asset management at Al Mal Capital in Dubai, told Bloomberg. “I don’t see a significant risk to the markets from here.”

The Abu Dhabi benchmark was flat yesterday, shedding 0.1 per cent. That gave it a gain of 0.9 per cent for March and 1.9 per cent for the year’s first quarter.

Among the capital’s stocks in the news, Taqa shares added 6.5 per cent after the energy company said it has lightened its debt load even as annual revenues had slumped and pre-tax losses worsened.

Global equities rose 7.3 per cent in March, paring their three-month decline to 0.2 per cent as emerging markets outperformed developed peers by the most in seven years.

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index added 0.4 per cent yesterday, bringing the gain in March to 13 per cent, the biggest monthly advance since October 2011. In March, Egyptian stocks have performed the best worldwide, up 22 per cent, followed by Brazil’s Ibovespa with a 20 per cent advance. Russia’s dollar-denominated RTS Index and the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index came next with 13 per cent gains.

* with additional reporting by Bloomberg News