Iran's equity market fails to remain dynamic: expert

By Farhad Daneshvar – Trend:

Although the main index of the Tehran stock exchange (TSE) saw an increase of 1.04 percent over the past week, a group of observers have suggested that the value of trades at the market has sharply dropped.

'The value of the real trades at the market currently stands below 100 billion tomans (about $30.3 million at official rate) which is an insignificant figure concerning the number of TSE listed companies,' Alireza Kadivar, a financial analyst and the deputy chief of Iran's Novin investment Bank, told Trend.

Forecasting about the performance of the market over the current year, he said that it heavily relies on situation of the commodities-driven firms.

'About half of the shares offered at the TSE belong to this group of companies. Therefore, those companies involved in the production of minerals, steel, oil and petrochemical products would play a key role,' Kadivar added.

In the meantime, the two factors of global prices of the commodities and the currency fluctuation have a direct impact on the profitability of these companies.

Saying that these businesses, normally, grow when the prices hike and considering the fact that such firms account for about half of shares offered at the TSE, Kadivar expressed hope that the market would demonstrate a better performance over the current year as the commodity prices continue to increase in the global markets and the rate of the US dollar against Iranian national currency is expected to grow.

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