Market News

– After imposing secondary sanctions on almost all Iranian Banks, US treasury department excludes a couple of banks and credit institutes from the SDN action list. According to the news, Middle East Bank, Hekmat Iranian Bank, Mehr-e-Iran Bank and Tose’e credit institution are now just in the SDN watch list and can be connected to SWIFT like before. 

– After the exemption of 8 countries from oil-related businesses with Iran, a huge wave of previous buyers of Iranian oil have been lined up again to continue their trades with the country. News has that South Korea (200K bpd) and Japan are once again registred their oil purchases orders with Iran while other nations like Iraq and Turkey are to continue their energy purchases. This is while the US officials are talking about only a grace period (45 days for Iraq on its electricity imports from Iran) which they have granted to all these countries to reduce their Iran trades.

– Data on the roads and urban planning ministry indicate that during the 1-year period ended Mehr (Sep/Oct 2018), the volume and value of commodities loading and unloading in Iran’s 21 ports (northern and southern) has declined by 14.4% contrary to the previous year, despite the rise of the monthly figure (6.4%) in contrast with Aug/Sep 2018.

In the Market

Equities failed to continue their bullish trend as the global market showed relative performance. In a weak session filled with ambiguities, TEDPIX (-0.47%) lost the ceiling of the 185K level again and closed at 184,231.05. IFEX (-1.55%) hit much harder and settled below 2,000 level after a while.

Today’s red trend mostly was driven by a mixed up performance by the mid-weighted Banking (-0.47%) sector. The rumour of Mellat Bank (BMLT, -4.97%) is to acquire heavily the loss-making Sarmanye Bank (IBKZ, -5.42%) ignite the sale force while the “to be delayed” announcement of free market FX rate translation effects on the bank’s balance sheet made the day doomed for the tickers. The first one got denied strongly by the Mellart bank’s officials while the later may become a true statement.

Separately, WTI crude, which is the U.S. benchmark for oil, fell 0.9% to settle at $60.16/bbl. Friday’s loss has extended its decline to 21.8% from its Oct 3 four-year high. On a related note, the oil-sensitive Oil Products (-1.23%) and Chemicals (-0.73%) sectors lost big. The fall in global commodities, like Methanol and Urea, has also a hand in the underperformance of today’s session.

In general, the market is, for now, a bit carried away and it is believed that only positive political news can lift its spirit again. The settlement of CFT joining disputes along with the possibility of a new export directive is heavily shadowed the short term trend of the market.

Source:

2018, US removes some Iranian Banks from the SDN list!, Saturday, Nov 10, p.1,<https://agahgroup.com>