Israel's stock market is walloping its neighbors – CNBC.com
At the recent Israel Investment Seminar in New York, Yossi Beinart, head of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, spoke of plans to attract investors, including a move to allow Israeli companies to adopt Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures, or GAAP.
In addition, the exchange, in conjunction with BlueStar Indexes, announced the TASE-BlueStar Israel Global Technology Index, which will track 57 major technology companies and serve as a benchmark for index funds.
“Israel is a dominant leader in high-tech. We are actively promoting this industry and encouraging international investors to invest broadly in Israeli companies,” Beinart said in a statement.
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The advance of Israeli stocks comes amid a pronounced decline elsewhere.
Egypt’s EGX 30 index has slumped 6 percent in the past month, while Dubai’s main index is off 4.6 percent and Bahrain’s All Share is off 2.9 percent. Egypt is down 0.4 percent year to date, while Dubai is down 4.2 percent and Bahrain is flat.
An exchange-traded fund that tracks the region broadly, the SPDR S&P Emerging Middle East & Africa fund, is up about 3 percent this year. By comparison, the S&P 500, which tracks U.S. large-cap companies, had gained just 0.17 percent in 2015 as of Thursday trading.
“Macroeconomic growth is starting to accelerate,” Friedman said. “You had a brief recession after the Gaza conflict last summer. Consumer spending in particular was weak. Israel has done a lot of things in recent years from an economic reform point of view that has really put the wind at its back.”
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To be sure, over the course of time Middle Eastern stocks have held up well against their global competitors. Egypt’s market, for instance, is up 41.6 percent over the past three years, while Israel’s has gained just 24.6 percent during the period.
In addition to buying individual companies, investors can play the region through the following ETFs, which represent the 10 largest funds in assets under management:
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Israel's stock market is walloping its neighbors – CNBC.com
