Buy! Buy! Buy!: Iraq’s stock market takes off

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Buy! Buy! Buy!: Iraq’s stock market takes off
Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Monday, October 7, 2008

Looking for a place to put your money amid the turmoil on Wall Street? Consider Iraq, writes USA Today.

Iraq’s fledgling stock exchange has increased 25 percent this year as improved security fans hope for an economic revival here, the paper reported in its Monday editions.

Trading volume is small, often less than $1 million a day compared with more than $100 billion a day in the United States, USA Today noted. Among the 94 companies listed on the Iraqi Stock Exchange are banks, insurance firms, manufacturers and a movie production firm. Hotel stocks led the latest rally on the belief they will be among the first Iraqi companies to attract foreign investment.

Although the ancient Babylonians were the first to create markets for stocks and bonds, trading is still a novelty in modern Iraq, USA Today wrote. The current exchange was only opened in 2004, and for a while it was housed in an abandoned hotel restaurant.

The market is dominated by a handful of wealthy Iraqis, many of whom live outside the country and call in their orders by phone to brokers, Taha Abdul Salam, the exchange’s CEO, told USA Today. Foreign investors account for less than 20 percent of activity.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=57930