Emerging market - Doha Stock Market

Doha Securities Market (in Qatar) has started in 1995. It is one of the most high flying emerging markets. 36 companies are listed in and among them also Al Rayyan Bank, far the most successful IPO. Main stock index DSM has amazing performance (at picture below). DSM is now at level 7620 points.

Structure of economy is 50% services, 49% industry, 1% agriculture.

I found usefull link at official home page Doha Securities Market providing weekly fundamental analysis for listed stocks. http://www2.dsm.com.qa/dsm/DSM_FinancialIndicators

Which Czech company is hot pick?

Which Czech shares do I like from long term perspective?

(more details at: www.stockweb.blogspot.com)

I am bearish with the highest growing blue chip in last 12 months (70%) Central European Media (NASDAQ: CETV). Main money maker TV Nova is loosing share in favour of TV Prima and also price for advertising is dropping.

On the other side I still like Zentiva (OTC: ZTVAF.PK ; LSE: ZEND) which in recent week lost 16% and nulify 12 months performance. This was due to announcement that they will not fulfill expected earnings results due to price regulation in Czech Republic. Still it is great expanding company doing acquisitions in other countries. Profit share from activities abroad is increasing every quarter. I believed will be going up with recovery in Turkey (last acquisition). Next, I like is Telefonica O2 (PSE: BAATELE) mainly because of high dividend policy (9%). And last bullish is energetic CEZ. Reasons: we are in the middle of company shares buyback, electricity prices are raising, company continue acquisitions in CEE Europe (Bulgaria Belene tender..)

I am neutral with banks (Erste Bank, Komercni Banka); high PE ratio (30, 25), negative sentiment worldwide about financials having impact.

As US investor you can also participate with closed end funds CEE and RNE having some Czech holdings. Generally I think CEE index will be overperforming US indices.

Erste Bank worse than analyst expectation.

Erste posted 25% profit growth (analyst expectations 30%). Even though shares are gaining 2.8% at Prague Stock Exchange today. Net profit 264 mil. EUR. New Romanian acquisition Banca Comerciala Romana contributed with 57 mil. EUR.

Futures contracts trading reach record volume at Prague Stock Exchange.

It hasn't been even one year since futures trading was introduced at Czech Stock Exchange and this product is gaining popularity. Today we could see record number of trades (CZK 69.173.000; around EUR 24.700). Although there are 6 series for 3 underlying assets (CEZ, Erste Bank, index PX50) almost the whole amount was traded with September contract for Czech index PX50. The highest one trade was with 100 contracts which is valued CZK 17.800.000 .

Emerging market - Tehran Stock market (TSE).

Iran stock exchange is considered as very exotic emerging market. Let's have a look for performance and structure.
New age of financial markets in Iran. After Islamic revolution, interests were cancelled and trading with bonds stopped. Assets of 36 banks and financial institutions were redistributed into government organizations. On 1989, Budget Act attracted back interest in investments. Kind of privatization. Iran is extremely risky investment. One year ago till now, since fundamentalist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been elected, main Tehran stock index TEPIX dropped from 14000 to 9200.
Structure of economy is 48% services, 28% industry, 24% agriculture.
Up to now there is not even single certificate with Iranian company in portfolio.

Weekly outlook 30.7.

Monday:
Economic: NA
Earnings: Archer Daniels (ADM), Cameco (CCJ), Humana (HUM), Monster (MNST), Fording (FDG), Titanium Metals (TIE), Sun Micro (SUNW), Anadarko (APC)

Tuesday:
Economic: Inc & Spend (.5%, .1%), Core PCE (.2%), Employment Cost Index (1.0%), Chicago PMI (59), Construction Spend (.3%), Consumer Confidence (105)
Earnings: Alcan (AL), Coach (COH), General Motors (GM), InterActive (IACI), NYMEX (NMX), Under Armour (UA), Cephalon (CEPH), Chipotle (CMG), First Solar (FSLR), General Maritime (GMR), Navteq (NVT), SiRF Tech (SIRF)

Wednesday:
Economic: ISM Index (55.5), Pending Home Sales, Weekly Crude, Auto / Truck (5.5M, 7.0M)
Earnings: Alltel (AT), Boyd (BYD), Cognizant (CTSH), CIGNA (CI), Kraft (KFT), MasterCard (MA), Time Warner (TWX), Barrick Gold (ABX), Dolby (DLB), Itron (ITRI), Prudential (PRU), Sohu (SOHU), Starbucks (SBUX), Sunoco (SUN), Disney (DIS)

Thursday:
Economic: Weekly Claims (315K), Factory Orders (1.3%)
Earnings: Alliant Tech (ATK), Brinks (BCO), Kodak (EK), Invest Tech (ITG), Nokia (NOK), NYSE Euro (NYX), VeraSun (VSE), CBeyond (CBEY), GFI Group (GFIG), Newmont (NEM), Scientific Games (SGMS), Tessera (TSRA)

Friday:
Economic: Nonfarm Payrolls (135K), Unemployment (4.5%), Hourly
Earnings (.3%), ISM Services (59.5)Earnings: Brush Engineer (BW), FTI (FCN), TETRA (TTI), Tim Hortons (THI), Weyerhaeuser (WY)

BRIC ETF - Brazil, Russia, India, China.

Last week was in sign of bears. Many emerging markets were loosing. The highest dip for Brazilian Bovespa Sao Paolo index with -8%. On the other side Shanghai Composite closed with positive 3%. The chart bellow is comparing BRIC index with S&P 500 for last 5 days.

(more details at: http://www.stockweb.blogspot.com/ )

Today I introduce ETFs having holdings in those countries. BLDRS Asia 50 ADR Index Fund (ADRA), BLDRS Emerging Market 50 ADR Index Fund (ADRE), iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM), SPDR S&P Emerging Asia Pacific ETF (GMF), SPDR S&P Emerging Markets ETF (GMM) and Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VWO).

EEM lost 9%. Country diversification ;high number of Brazilian shares; didn't play in favour. Also 20% in financial industry is not the best pick after subprime lender issue.
ADRE has 25% Brazilian shares but industry structure is broader. Financial is not weighed so much.
Two thirds of GMF are in Chinese and Taiwanese companies like China Mobile, Taiwan Semiconductors etc. Dominant sectors are information technology and financial
The most country and sector diversified is GMM. None of countries has more that 15%.
VWO has more or less the same country diversification like GMM but financial sector is more weighed.
The winner is ADRA composed mainly from Asian holding and therefore drop for last week is only 4.2%.

Bear hit also Czech stock market. Weekly performance for Czech blue chips.

Earnings season is just at the beginning. Telefonica O2 already released results which beat analyst estimates. Annual income growth 14.3%. Company has attractive dividend yield 9% with dividend date 10-Sep-2007. In advance Zentiva informed that will not satisfy analyst with results because of price regulations.
Without any other corporate news we could still see high volatility extended over all world markets.

Weekly performance:
Czech index PX50 -4.34%, CEZ -2.62%, Erste Bank -5.95%, Komercni Banka -2.47%, Unipetrol -6.67%, Zentiva -16.40%, Orco -10.09%, ECM -9.33%

Due to subprime lenders issues both developers (Orco, ECM) are under bearish pressure.

New Blogger 3 column template

Today I finish last correction with new template. Original inspiration is coming from Wordpress templates and it is adjusted for new Blogger.
I hope Stockweb site is now easier for navigation...

Tender for Bulgarian nuclear plant Belene.

6 companies (CEZ, Enel, E.ON, RWE, EdF, Electrabel) are involved in tender for 49% share of Bulgarian nuclear power plant Belene. Offers are expected till the end of October and the winner will be announced at the end of 2007. Majority owner is Bulgarian NETC.

Turkish ETF to trade index DJ Turkey Titans 20 (TRY).

Turkish stock exchange and currency Lira are surging from the beginning of the week. Reelected prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is considered positively as among main priorities is joining EU.

At charts you see currency (Lira v. Euro) and stocks reaction measured by index DJ Turkey TITANS 20. Both factors are included in price of ETF Turkey (LYX0AK) issued by Lyxor.

Today Czech stocks trading down and up.

Index PX50 was already -1.2% but shortly before closing bell started to gain and finally closed in positive 0.6%. Trading activities were influenced with stocks directions from abroad.



Zentiva reached at CZK 1440 (1.16%) above 50 MA. Among laggards Unipetrol (-2.9%) after profit taking, negative sentiment in developers industry has still impact on Orco Group (-1.86%).

Weekly outlook. 23.7.

This week is quite interesting in terms of earnings reports...

Monday:
Economic: NA
Earnings: Arch Coal (ACI), Halliburton (HAL), Merck (MRK), TASER (TASR), Hasbro (HAS), American Express (AXP), Texas Inst (TXN), Netflix (NFLX), Ultra Clean (UCTT)

Tuesday:
Economic: NA
Earnings: AT&T (T), Burlington (BNI), CME (CME), DuPont (DD), Countrywide (CFC), Jacobs (JEC) Lexmark (LXK), Northrop (NOC), EMC (EMC), Amazon (AMZN), Lam Research (LRCX), NutriSystem (NTRI), Illumina (ILMN)

Wednesday:
Economic: Existing Home (5.9M), Weekly Crude, Fed’s Beige Book
Earnings: Boeing (BA), Conoco (COP), Alleghany Tech (ATI), LifeCell (LIFC), Monster (MNST),
Nat Oilwell (NOV), Airgas (ARG), Akamai (AKAM), Baidu (BIDU), Covanta (CVA), F5 Networks (FFIV), MEMC Matls (WFR), Pulte (PHM), Ryland (RYL), Qualcomm (QCOM)

Thursday:
Economic: Weekly Claims, Durable Goods (1.7%), New Homes (900K)
Earnings: 3M (MMM), Aetna (AET), Apache (APA), Black & Decker (BDK), Blockbuster (BBI), Carbo Ceramics (CRR), Celgene (CELG), Dow (DOW), DR Horton (DHI), Ford (F), Imclone (IMCL), IntC-Exchange (ICE), Potash (POT), Rediff (REDF), US Air (LCC), Amgen (AMGN), Deckers (DECK), Cymer (CYMI), KLA-Tencor (KLAC), NVIDIA (NVDA) Varian (VSEA), Technitrol (TNL), Verisign (VRSN)

Friday:
Economic: Adv GDP (3.2%), Chain Deflator (3.4%), Michigan (91.5)
Earnings: Exxon (XOM), American Axle (AXL), Chevron (CVX), Sepracor (SEPR), TRowe (TROW), Veeco (VECO), Buenaventura SA (BVN)

Ukraine stock index PFTS gained 97% (YTD).

Last week I wrote post about best performing markets for first 6 months 2007 http://stockweb.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-is-best-performing-stock-market.html
The winner is Ukrainian stock index PFTS with 97% (volume is falling rapidly; half of the volume year ago). Boarder index KAC 20 is with similar performance.

Let me today indroduce instrument for investment. You hardly find ETF or CEF. But still there are some certificates at EUWAX which you can trade in Stuttgart. If you are risk averse, S-BOX Ukraine index certificate (ISIN DE000DBIUKR2) is consist of 8 major shares. Dividends are included, spread is quite high (2%) and managerial commission 1.8%.

Nokia (NOK) gains from N series smart phones.

Nokia (NOK) has started nice uptrend since March this year. At chart there is visible bullish divergence with MACD. Technically I expect short correction but still with long term positive outlook.

Something has been changed in handset industry. Consumers started to prefer cheap cell phones. Especially Motorola (MOT) was hit by this trend. Research in Motion (RIMM) and Nokia seems to have more loyal customers.

Prague Energy Exchange starts trading tomorrow

Prague Energy Exchange (PXE) openings is scheduled for tomorrow. For now two companies signed off contracts to be participants. Those are energentic giant CEZ and Prazska energetika a. s. (PRE).

Today's trading at Prague Stock Exchange closed in negative -0.70% . Among laggards CEZ (-2%) after competitor Mostecka uhelna announced agreement with foreign corporation. Spanish Telefonica O2 won tender to provide telecommunication services for public sector. Despite of that closed with -1.31%.

I like this step back as Czech market had been becoming more and more overvaluated.

Weekly outlook. 16.7.

Monday:
Economic: Empire Index (17)
Earnings: Eaton (ETN), Mattel (MAT), Novellus (NVLS)

Tuesday:
Economic: PPI & core (.1%, .2%), IP & CU (.3%, 81.5%)
Earnings: Coca Cola (KO), Merrill (MER), J & J (JNJ), Intel (INTC), Yahoo (YHOO), Wells (WFC)

Wednesday:
Economic: CPI & core (.1%, .2%), Weekly Crude, Housing & Bldg P’s (1.45M, 1.49M)
Earnings: Abbott (ABT), JP Morgan (JPM), United Tech (UTX), Altria (MO), eBay (EBAY), Wash Mutual (WM), Cintas (CTAS)

Thursday:
Economic: Weekly Claims (315K), Leading Indicators (.1%), Philly Fed (13), FOMC Minutes
Earnings: BofA (BAC), Continental (CAL), Cypress (CY), Freeport McMoran (FCX), Ford (F), Harley (HOG), Illinois Tool (ITW), NASDAQ (NDAQ), Google (GOOG), IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT)

Friday:
Economic: NA
Earnings: Caterpillar (CAT), Citigroup (C), Schlumberger (SLB), Wachovia (WB), Boston Scientific (BSX), Sonoco (SON)

Invest with Austria ETF (EWO) into Eastern Europe

From western European countries Austria is so called gateway into central and eastern European exposure. Many Austrian companies have their subsidiaries in Czech Republic, Poland or Hungary. And also after recent EU enlargement in Romania and Bulgaria.



EWO is composed of stocks based in Austria. Branches of the biggest holding Erste Bank Der Oester (17%) you can find all over the CEE Europe except Poland and Bulgaria. Financial sector is major share in the ETF with 46%. This sector is attractive as eastern European growth must be founded by someone...
Mining, energy sectors are making up one third of EWO. OMV company cannot be missing in this share.

Hot international ETF. Sweden (EWD), Germany (EWG), Netherlands (EWN).

My favourite picks among global group of international ETFs are mostly western European countries. I like Sweden (EWD), Germany (EWG) and Netherlands (EWN) issued by iShares.

Unfortunately I missed excellent entry price one month ago. Those European stock markets were at stagnation and currency (EUR - Euro; SEK - Swedish Krona) weak against USD. From that point markets started to grow and also currencies improved even to all time high. Therefore (as it is visible at chart) ETF is beating OMXS Stockholm all share index.

Week summary at Czech stock exchange. Mittal Steel is leading.

Boarder czech index RM (RM-SYSTEM exchange) lost almost 1%. Index has been drag down heavily weighed energetic CEZ (BAACEZ) -2%, after company was delisted by UBS from "top three picks" in central and eastern Europe region. At the end of the week shares were rebounded due to upgrade from analysts Credit Suisse. with target price CZK 1300. My favourite Unipetrol (BAAUNIPE) gained 3% and was among leaders for this week and cross above psychological CZk 300 which I post earlier as my target price. Leader is Mittal Steel Ostrava with 16% after management changeover.

What is the worst stock market index?

Laggard among world indices is Venezuelan index with performance -22.89% hit by Chavez political reforms. Second position is for Jamaican index JSE.

Index	year to date
VENEZUELA STOCK MKT INDX	-22.89 %
JSE MARKET INDEX	-10.49 %
Kenya SE NSE 20	-9.30 %
SRI LANKA COLOMBO	-8.79 %
TADAWUL ALL SHARE INDEX	-6.78 %
Trinidad Tobago Composite	-5.83 %
IGBC GENERAL INDEX	-4.03 %
IRISH OVERALL INDEX	-2.65 %
BLOM STOCK INDEX	-1.15 %
ECUADOR-GUAYAQUI BOLSA	-0.64 %

What is the best performing stock market index?

Let's summarize first 6 months of the year 2007. Prague Stock Exchange is not in TOP 10 performing stock markets but still 16% increase is above average.

Ukrainian index PFTS almost doubled. Chinese index CSI 300 is at second position. In two years perspective Peru Lima index was with the best performance supported mainly by copper demand from China and by other mining activities. In 2006 Lima index gained amazing 170%.

Index	year to date
PFTS Index	96.88 %
CSI 300 INDEX	85.68 %
PERU LIMA GENERAL INDEX	77.31 %
BELEX15 INDEX	68.74 %
Slovenian Total Market	60.00 %
BOTSWANA GABORONE INDEX	57.16 %
Nigeria Index	55.08 %
CROATIA ZAGREB CROBEX	48.26 %
KARACHI 100 INDEX	38.09 %
DHAKA STK EXG DHAKA	37.35 %

Poland economy will not be affected by government crisis

Twins Kaczynski recalled vice prime minister Andrzej Lepper. He was suspicious of corruption. He announced that his party is leaving government coalition with him. Announcement needn't to be fulfilled as it happened beforehand.

For me investing in Poland is the best choice among central European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland). Due to political instability Polish stock market is nowadays in higher volatility. This can be good entry point for long position.

Economic growth in Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Ukraine

Weekly outlook 9.7.

Monday
Economic: Consumer Credit ($6.0B)
Earnings: Schnitzer (SCHN), Alcoa (AA)

Tuesday
Economic: Wholesale Inventories (.4%)
Earnings: Pepsi Bottling (PBG), Infosys (INFY), Acuity (AYI), Chattem (CHTT), Sealy (ZZ)

Wednesday
Economic: Weekly Crude
Earnings: AAR Corp (AIR), Chaparral (CHAP), Genentech (DNA), YUM! Brands (YUM)

Thursday
Economic: Weekly Claims (315K), Trade Balance (-$60.0B), Treasury Budget ($31.0B)
Earnings: Fastenal (FAST), M&T Bank (MTB), Marriott (MAR), Progressive (PGR)

Friday
Economic: Import / Export, Retail Sales & ex-Auto (.3%, .2%), Business Inventories (.3%) Michigan Sentiment (86)
Earnings: General Electric (GE)

How to invest money in Croatia (indices SETX and CROBEX)

Croatia will join EU probably in 2009. It is indicating also nice average salary (USD 9597 p.a.) which is even above median in EU newcomers. Economy of country with 4.4 mil people grew last year 4.6% with with low CPI 3.2%. Growth 4.7% is expected for 2007. As for other non-EU countries there are not ETF dedicated only for one country and therefore the best way how to trade Croatian index is with investment certificates.

(more details on http://stockweb.blogspot.com)

Open end S-BOX Kroatien-Index (ISIN AT0000A04P9I) issued by Erste Bank is underlaying 10 biggest companies. But diversification is low as 3 major caps (Privredna Banka Zagreb, Adris, Ina Industrija Nafte) having 60% of Croatian index SETX. Wider Croatian index CROBEX includes 30 companies with max weight 0f 20% for one holding. You can invest to CROBEX with open end certificate from ABN Ambro (ISIN DE000AA0F677).

I also wrote two posts about Croatian GDR traded on London Stock Exchange. http://stockweb.blogspot.com/2007/06/how-to-invest-money-in-croatia-ina.html
http://stockweb.blogspot.com/2007/06/2how-to-invest-money-in-croatia-pliva.html
With those GDR you can invest directly to two Croatia blue chips (pharmaceutical Pliva and oil & gas producer Ina Industrija Nafte)