The Kuwait Stock Exchange has ended 2019 as the top performer among Mena’s exchange indices finishing the year up more than 32.4%.
Investor interest in Kuwaiti stocks was helped by the decision of index provider MSCI to upgrade its MSCI Kuwait Index from frontier to emerging market status.
The announcement was made in mid-December and the move, which is expected to generate billions of dollars in investor inflow, will start in May 2020.
Kuwait was also the only index in the region to beat the MSCI emerging markets benchmark which went up by 15% over the year.
The Dubai bourse was the second best performer in the region with its index rising 9.3% over the year, despite a slump in real estate prices while the Saudi index closed 7.2% up for the year, Egypt’s index increased by 7.1% and Qatar’s index ended the year up by 1%.
By contrast the Oman index fell for the third year in a row finishing 2019 down by 7.9% and close to a 15-year low.
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