As you know, the Iraqi Stock Exchange went digital with 5 stocks on the 19th of April this year, 2009. Here are the results from the first day of trading: link. Now, that’s not a huge deal in terms of what was traded – at least, not in terms of profit or gains for any particular stock. Only 15 trades were made, and you can clearly see that closing prices were exactly the same as opening prices. Al-Mansour Bank was the heaviest traded stock, capturing 52.630% of the action with 500,000 shares valued at 1.55 IQD each.
However, let’s take a gander at the rest of the ISX – this could be interesting! The trading day previous to April 19 2009 was April 16 – you can see the action here. Total number of trades: 282. About a year ago. April 20 2008, that number was 129. The ISX has seen a slow growth from 129 to 282 over the past year, as is expected for a country in the situation Iraq is in.
We could spend hours analyzing the growth over the last year or 5, but let’s look at something more interesting – the change from April 16th to April 23rd, with the implementation of electronic trading.
Simple numbers, folks.
Total ISX trades April 16, 2009 (pre electronic): 282.
Total ISX trades April 23, 2009 (after electronic): 359.
The Iraqi Stock Exchange just experienced 27.30% growth in a week. Discuss in the comments section or send your ideas in here.
An interesting article on the Gulf Daily News – Sinan Al Shabibi made some comments regarding Iraq’s reserves in the forex during a meeting with Arab central bank governors in Dubai. Of note, he said:
