The Chief Executive Officer of the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE), Mr. Nader Azar, said that the trading value at the ASE decreased during 2018 reaching JD (2.3) billion; a decrease of (20.7%), compared with JD (2.9) billion for the year 2017. The number of traded shares reached (1.2) billion shares, traded through (512) thousand transactions, compared with (1.7) billion shares traded during 2017 through (717) thousand transactions
The ASE price index weighted by free float shares decreased to reach (1908.8) point at the end of 2018 compared with (2126.8) point by the end of 2017; a decrease of (10.3%). The market capitalization of listed shares at the ASE decreased to JD (16.1) billion; a decrease of (5%), compared with year 2017 closing, constituting (56.7%) of the GDP.
As for the non-Jordanian investment at the ASE, the statistics showed that the total value of shares that were bought by non-Jordanian investors since the beginning of the year until the end of November 2018 was JD736.1 million, representing 42.6% of the overall trading value, while the value of shares sold by them amounted to JD712.5 million. As a result, the net of non-Jordanian investments showed an increase of JD23.6 million, compared to a decrease by JD331.4 million for the same period of 2017. Accordingly, Non-Jordanian ownership in companies listed at the ASE by end of December 2018 represented 51.7% of the total market value, 37.3% for Arab investors and 14.4% for non-Arab investors.
As for the performance of the public shareholding companies for the first three-quarters of the year 2018, the financial results revealed that profits after taxes for the listed companies at the ASE increased to JD 919.3 million, compared with JD 789.4 million for the same period of 2017, which represents an increase by 16.5%.