Saudi Investor Confidence Index remains very strong at 135.8 points, outperforming the GCC Index, SHUAA Capital, the region's leading financial services institution, said in its monthly GCC Investor Sentiment Report issued on Monday. However, “there has been a marked fall in confidence among international and regional investors towards the GCC, as seen by a 10.5 point drop in the GCC Index. Much of the decline in the GCC Index can be attributed to this month's significant fall in sentiment toward current economic conditions,” the report noted. Oliver Schutzmann, chief communications officer of SHUAA Capital and author of the Investor Sentiment Report, said: “Saudi Arabia enjoys the second highest level of investor confidence in the region. Even though the Kingdom saw a slight drop in its Confidence Index, along with Qatar, it is still seen as the top destination for investment.” The only report of its kind for the Gulf markets, the report draws together the submissions from international and regional institutional investors and starts to formulate the SHUAA GCC Investor Confidence Index. The Index has been designed to provide the global investment community with a benchmark of investor confidence for GCC countries and track changes in investor behavior over time. “It has proven to be a very challenging month for the GCC economies, with the balance of respondents figure for investors' perception of current economic conditions increasingly negative, slumping by over 30 percent this month to -15 percent. However, a decline in investor sentiment towards current market conditions has not been restricted to just the GCC this month, as the balance of respondents for Global Emerging Markets declined 14 percent to -5 percent while BRIC countries fell 9.1 percent to 13.3 percent.” “The six month investor outlook for the GCC economy remains positive this month, with a balance of 53.3 percent, albeit lower than last month's 65.2 percent. Despite the 11.8 percent loss for the GCC, the six month economic outlook for the region compares favorably against both BRIC countries and Global Emerging Markets, which both recorded slightly higher figures of 56.7 percent and 55 percent,” Schutzmann further said. On the six-month outlook for the Saudi stock market, he said “investors have retained their positive six-month outlook for regional stock markets, especially for the Saudi Arabian Tadawul which is expected to perform the best, with 56.7 percent expecting it to rise on balance.” The SHUAA GCC Investor Confidence Index and its sub-indices for all six GCC countries are derived from an equal weighting of responses to four questions of the Investor Sentiment Survey: current view and six months outlook on economic conditions, current view and six month outlook on equity market valuations. The Index and all sub-indices have a range between 0 and 200. A number greater than 100 represents positive sentiment, a number lower than 100 represents negative sentiment. __
