Kazakhstan's stock market grows to 50.2 trillion tenge

The Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market highlighted that August's capitalization growth was mainly driven by a 16% gain in Kaspi.kz shares and an 8.5% increase in Kazatomprom shares. Both companies are on the KASE Index representative list.

The KASE Index advanced 4% in August, reaching 8,121.46 points on September 1. Since the beginning of the year, it has risen 15.5%.

Investor activity in the stock market has also increased. Trading volume in August reached 24.3 billion tenge, up 22.6% from the previous month. The growth was mainly driven by transactions in shares of Halyk Bank of Kazakhstan, Kaspi.kz, KEGOC, Freedom Holding Corp., Kcell, and Kazatomprom.

As of September 1, the trading lists of the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange included shares of 85 names from 72 Kazakh issuers.

Trading in foreign securities rises 20.6%

The KASE Global sector had 52 share listings, three ADRs and 25 ETFs from 71 foreign issuers as of early September.

Trading volume in this sector in August reached 32.2 billion tenge, up 20.6% for the month. The growth was driven in part by transactions in securities of ProShares Trust, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., SPDR Gold Trust, NVIDIA, VanEck ETF Trust, Salesforce, Moderna, and Micron Technology.

What happened in the bond market

The volume of corporate debt traded on KASE slipped 0.6% in August to 16.7 trillion tenge. Since the start of the year, however, the figure has grown 2.7%.

Trading volume in corporate bonds plunged 76% in the space of a month to 312.4 billion tenge. The agency attributed this to lower trading volume in the primary market. At the same time, the volume of government debt traded on KASE edged up 0.8% in August to 36.7 trillion tenge. Since the start of the year, growth has reached 15.1%.

Trading volume in government securities climbed to 1.2 trillion tenge in August, up 16.4% for the month.

On the primary market, trading volume increased 7.7% to 0.9 trillion tenge. The Ministry of Finance raised 780.3 billion tenge by issuing ten bond tranches with yields to maturity ranging from 14% to 18.3%. The akimats of 16 regions and Shymkent brought in another 114.7 billion tenge under state programs.

Investment accounts approach 6 million

The number of accounts in the Central Depository's nominal holding system grew 1.8% in August to 5.85 million. Of that total, 700,600 are subaccounts of depositors' clients. Another 5.15 million are personal accounts opened by brokers and recorded through aggregated omnibus accounts. The latter figure has expanded 18% since the start of the year.

In the collective investment market, 55 mutual funds were active as of September 1. Their total assets amounted to 302.5 billion tenge, down 3.7% in August. The agency attributed the decline mainly to negative revaluation of the securities portfolio. 

As Qazinform News Agency previously reported, Kazakhstan is set to simplify companies' access to the stock market.