Market News

– Expected to be a new derivative, the future contracts on 30 blue-chips of Tehran Stock Exchange will be open to trade from December 16, 2018. These futures will be expired in March 2019 and can only be traded via online trading platforms. The underlying assets of this new derivative are stocks of 30 giants of TSE and IFB with the following details:

– After the recent corrective trend of FX rates in Iran Economy, led to a better than expected appreciation of Iranian Rial, today the rates continued to fall even further as the market maker (CBI) purchase rates were slightly higher than street dealers. This happened while a good chunk of households dollars kept coming to the market floor and made the USD/IRR trade below the 100,000 level. Most economists believed that the measures have taken by the CBI so far were indeed the right call at the right time and the exchanges must fall even more to reasonable levels.

– The national development fund of Iran has allocated a figure of USD 98.608 bn from 2011 up until spring of 2018/19 in form of FX facilities to Iranian banks. Mellat Bank stands the first with USD 2 bn worth of FX contracts while this figure is only USD 100 mn for Hekmat Iranian Bank. The below table shows the details of NDF with banks:

In the Market

The TEDPIX fell 0.52% today to extend its monthly loss to more than 10%. Today’s sell-off was a function of poor sentiment driven by global growth concerns and a continuation of weak price action. The IFEX lost 0.47%, as well and closed below 1,850 level (1,842.49 ).

The selling started mid-session when investors of mid-weighted Banking (-2.12%) and Auto (-2.70%) sectors got impatient with all the waiting on official news declaring their long-awaited FX translation rate and price hikes respectively. Mellat Bank (BMLT, -3.73%) stamped 110.62 red points on the index solely and placed second amid the top five worst performances.

Despite the better than expected performance reports and off the chart export data (in times of most paralyzing economic sanctions), heavy weightedMetals (-0.33%) sector was not favoured by investors as the pessimistic cloud of judgment covers the total market sky. This was the same for Chemicals (-0.32%) and Oil products (-0.12%) industries as well.

In general, investors have despaired with the current situation of the market and the trading volumes and value prove the fact. It seems that after a series of super bullish days of the exchanges now it is the time to sit back and wait for the next opportunity.

Source:

2018, Future contracts on 30 blue-chips portfolio trade at Tehran Stock Exchange!, Saturday, Dec 15, p.1,<https://agahgroup.com>