IRAN Markets

2015

Report

NOV

Domestic and Global Events Market event:  Commodity market  Real estate & Housing market  Foreign Currencies market  Capital market  Money market

Investment Advisory Division

Investment Advisory Division Domestic Events

On 18 October 2015 the EU and the US issued legislative documents, as the first stage towards implementing their respective sanctions relief commitments pursuant to the JCPOA.The EU measures comprise two amending Regulations and an authorising Decision. On the US side, two documents were published - a set of contingent waivers and a memorandum from the President to the Secretaries of State, the Treasury, Commerce, and Energy.Importantly, these changes do not have any immediate effect on the existing sanctions and will only come into effect on “Implementation Day” namely once Iran has implemented its key nuclear-related commitments described in the JCPOA and this has been verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The exact date of Implementation Day is not yet know but is expected to occur sometime in the first quarter of 2016. Through a Dec. 2 report, the UN nuclear watchdog suggested although Iran took some limited steps towards developing a nuclear bomb, but the activities did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies. Following the IAEA’s report, US announced its readiness to close PMD. Hamid Baeedinejad, a senior member of Iranian negotiation team, has said that the P5+1 and Iran have kicked off the latest round of talks to discuss implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) since Dec. 3, he expressed hope that the outcome of the latest talks will contribute to the implementation of the JCPOA. So it seems the “Implementation Day” comes true. Although foreign investors and companies are considering future opportunities in Iran very carefully, and every day Iran is open to many politic and economic delegations but domestic economy events do not reflect an optimistic perspective. Iran's economy almost depends on the sale of crude oil, petrochemical and mining product. Imposed sanctions in recent years also removed some commercial activities and opportunities and reduced the volume of foreign business, this sector can grow again. Although the worldwide automotive industry has been enjoying a period of relatively strong growth and profitability, and annual sales have reached prerecession levels in some regions, but in Iran, severe liquidity shortage, led to car manufacturers also face with a difficult situation like other industries. There is seen an oversupply in the most of manufacturing activities. Central bank offered a low interest rate loan (16%), as a part of Economic Stimulus Plan, to motivate automobile buyers and help to this industry which is affiliated with some other basic industries, and involved a significant share of country employment. In order to help to small businesses this package would have given the line of credit to the certain segment of society. The need to cut interest rates is a major and helpful solution, but there is some challenge about how to do. Although business conditions are turbulent , the capacity of Iran economy after nuclear deal should not be neglected. Commodity market, stock market beside the real estate and housing market are also suffering from ongoing recession, but USD strengthening corrected the price of gold. It seems the government plans to increase USD/ Rial parity to protect domestic production and reduce the budget deficit. The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) announced that the inflation rate for the 12-month period to the eight Iranian calendar month of Aban, compare to similar period in last year is about 14.3 percent, while based on Iran's Statistics Center announcement, it is about 13.1 , and the inflation rate of the 8th month of year is 0.7%. The CPI index for urban area, for 8th month of Iranian calendar is also 0.7percent more than last month.

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Investment Advisory Division

Global Events

On the evening of 13 November 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks occurred in Paris by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).The attackers killed 130 people, France launched the biggest airstrike of Opération Chammal, its contribution to the anti-ISIL bombing campaign, striking ISIL targets in Al-Raqqah On 18 November. These attacks condemned by most of government, and Germany, USA, Russia announced their target to fight against ISIL. Meanwhile Turkish combat aircraft shot down a Russian Su-24 during an airspace dispute close to the Turkish-Syrian border, and the tensions increase between two countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin, during the climate talks in Paris, said that Moscow has evidence showing that Turkey shot down was because of their goal to protect illicit oil shipments from the Islamic State, which denied by Erdogan. Russia imposed a number of economic sanctions on Turkey. These included the suspension of visa-freetravel to Russia for Turkish citizens, limits on Turkish residents and companies doing business in Russia and restrictions on imports of Turkish products. Russian tour operators were discouraged from selling Turkish package holidays and asked to stop charter flights to Turkey. Turkey economy is strongly dependent to Russia. IN tourism, food, textile industries, energy and commodities sector, Turkey will face with undesirable outcomes. The mentioned events, totally can strengthen Iran situation in both political and economic field in the region and the world. The global economy continues to struggle, with China's slowdown, the downward bias in commodity prices, and the renewed increase in financial market turbulence risking further weakness. There are not enough growth engines around the world. Most nations and regions are reporting moderate output growth and a number of large nations, including Brazil, Russia and Venezuela, are still mired in recession. World economic growth remains modest at 3.1% in 2015, mainly due to a continued slowdown in emerging and developing economies, as well as low US growth in the third quarter, and global economic growth is expected to improve to 3.4% in 2016. US growth has been revised to 2.4% in 2015 and 2.5% in 2016, while total OECD growth remains at 2.0% for 2015 and 2.1% for 2016. Figures for China and India remain unchanged at 6.8% and 6.4%, and 7.4% and 7.6%, respectively The biggest downside risks are in the resource-sensitive regions. Many emerging market and developing nations — ranging from the Asia-Pacific region to Latin America — are being negatively affected by the combination of the slowdown in China, the decline in commodity prices, persistent U.S. dollar strength, and the intensifying weakness in currency and financial markets.

Market Events

There are 5 basic markets with different size and importance. Real state, commodities, foreign currencies, securities plus money markets under special circumstances face with bullish or bear market. As World Bank outlook of 2015 has stated, this year may well see a rare occurrence for world commodity markets – a decline in all nine key commodity price indices. While oil prices have seen the most dramatic decline, the third largest since World War II, other commodities have also been gradually weakening in recent months. And this broad-based weakness is expected to continue throughout 2015, before beginning a modest turn around in 2016. Decline in wide span of commodity global market will also affect some important part of stock markets. In Iran, Real estate and money market, especially because of economic barriers in recent years are classified as local market.

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Investment Advisory Division

Commodity Market

Investors access about 50 major commodity markets worldwide with purely financial transactions increasingly outnumbering physical trades in which goods are delivered. World Bank Commodity markets outlook, released in July, Showed disappointing year for commodity market. A wide range of products are classified in this type of market. For some of them like Precious metals, oil, petrochemical and non ferrous metals (copper, zinc, aluminum, and lead) we use global price, but for steel products use local price, published in Iran mercantile exchange (ime). Oil: World oil demand is expected to grow by 1.50 mb/d in 2015 to average 92.86 mb/d, unchanged from the previous report. In 2016, world oil demand growth is seen reaching 1.25 mb/d, in line with the previous month’s assessment, to average 94.14 mb/d Non-OPEC oil supply is estimated to average 57.24 mb/d in 2015, an increase of 0.72 mb/d, unchanged from the previous month’s estimation. The forecast for 2016 nonOPEC oil supply remained unchanged, showing a contraction of 0.13 mb/d to average 57.11 mb/d. OPEC NGLs in 2016 are forecast to increase by 0.17 mb/d to average 6.18 mb/d. In October, OPEC production according to secondary sources dropped by 256 tb/d to average 31.38 mb/d. Despite the peak maintenance season seen in October with more than 8 mb/d of capacity offline worldwide, refinery margins fell across the globe due to high inventories and expectations of a mild winter. Product markets in the Atlantic Basin continued to weaken even with healthy US gasoline demand, pressured by oversupply. Asian margins lost some momentum amid a narrowing of gasoline and gasoil crack spreads which outweighed the positive performance of naphtha and fuel oil. Several factors are contributing to the likely continued price drop, including the end of the summer season, when demand for oil is generally at a high point, as well as market concerns over the sluggish Chinese economy and the fact that oil-producing countries continue to stockpile their supplies. Middle Eastern countries, led by OPEC have shown no signs of cutting their production targets to bring global supply more in line with demand.Below chart indicates 11.3% drop in opec basket price:

Gold: Slowing economic growth has affected Chinese consumer sentiment and gold, East-Asian investment weakness broadly reflects price expectations.

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Investment Advisory Division Since 2011, central banks and other institutions have been unwavering in their accumulation for gold. Demand amounted to 137.4t in Q2, 15% above the 5-year average, while demand for the first half of 2015 totalled 261t. Gold remains sought-after by those looking to diversify their reserves away from troublesome currencies. Russia continued to lead the way – feeding its voracious appetite with net purchases of 36.8t during the quarter. This brought gold reserves to a total of 1,275t, and maintained a 13% share of total reserves. The below chart is for second quarter:

The historical data for gold demand till Q2 is represented below:

Turning the spotlight to the Middle East, the second quarter was a period of widespread weakness. Consumers in Iran battled a raft of negative forces, including: lower oil prices, currency weakness and international economic sanctions. With regards to the latter, the lifting of sanctions sparked an improvement in demand in recent weeks, which was evident in premiums rising close to US$22/oz, although the higher VAT burden and weak oil prices remain headwinds. Below charts show the price trend during November. It seems the gold market face with lots of problem to grow sharp again:

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Investment Advisory Division

Metals:

The International Copper Study Group (ICSG) released preliminary data for August 2015 world copper supply and demand in its November 2015 Copper Bulletin.Based on their report, in the first eight months of 2015, world apparent usage is estimated to have declined by around 2% (295,000 t) compared with that in the same period of 2014. Excluding China, world usage declined by around 4%. Although Chinese apparent demand increased by around 0.5%, usage declined by 5% and 7% in the EU and Japan, respectively, and by 50% in Russia (following the withdrawal of Russia’s cathode export tax in September 2014). On a regional basis, usage is estimated to have remained essentially unchanged in Asia while increasing by around 2% in Africa and in the Americas and declining by 11% in Europe. According to copper price trend in November, some factory must shot down. Other nonferrous metals, based on LME data, also have continued their downtrend till the last week of August. There is seen a crash in the prices especially after China’s surprise devaluation of its currency, then the price were slightly recovered. It seems there is no stimulus to inverse this downtrend. Ranges of decline rather to last mount are in zinc (8.3), in lead (2.4), in copper (10.6).

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Investment Advisory Division Steel products: Steel products are used for domestic consumption; the exported volume to region is negligible. In Iran 2 major producers in steel industry are Fulad Mobarake Isfahan (more than 50% of total market share) & Zob Ahan Isfahan. First one produces coil, sheet and coated plate. The average price of sold product in November at Iran Mercantile exchange showed internal stability, but regarding USD strengthening they actually experienced about 6% fall in price.

Petrochemical products: after a stable condition in petrochemical market, reduce in oil price coupled with decline in petrochemical price again. The continuous downtrend of the oil price caused petro product to fall easily. The below table and figures show the price trend in November:

The changes in last three months in below charts explained the expectations of petrochemical products. Like other market, China as a consumption hub in the world, has the world had to endure tough times.

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Investment Advisory Division

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Investment Advisory Division

Changes in petrochemical price usually have a time lag, producer decrease their prices when they are sure dominant trend remain for a while, and now it seems they accept the downtrend.

Real State and Housing Market

Based on Iranian cultural teachings this market is one of the most important markets. It is almost the first investment priority. This market is often in the first place of size and transaction among other markets. Because of recent circumstances the transactions have experienced slow decline rather than last year in the same period. The comparative figures of Tehran transactions have shown in below table:

There is seen 11.9% growth in the rate of housing rental market in Tehran rather than last year in the same period. Growth rate in rental market has been less than inflation rate. The share of income spent on housing expenditure is about 28.4%. The dominant recession in this market cause to face over supply. There is no sign of the dramatic jump in the market, as Abdoh Tabrizi said: “There is about 200 billion USD empty house.” Although the Central bank new policy to facilitate getting mortgage and trying to arouse the demand can activate these bear market, but the improvement of the transaction may not cause overall rise prices and in optimistic view, the number of transactions will be added.

Foreign Currencies Market

In global foreign currency market, changes in rates exchange suggest the strengthening of the dollar to most of currencies. Central bank and governor policies lead to the strengthening of US dollar In Iran. USD/Rial reached to 36450. The origin tension because of ISIL movement and Russia- Turkey relation along with world strengthening of USD, speculative activities and governor need to cover part of its budget deficit are some reasons for this upward trend. The last month trend is represented below:

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Investment Advisory Division

10 basic currencies parity to dollar are also represent in below table:

U.S. employment increased at a healthy pace in November, in another sign of the economy's resilience, and will most likely be followed by the first Federal Reserve interest rate rise in a decade later this month.Nonfarm payrolls rose 211,000 last month, the U.S. Labor Department said on Friday. September and October data was revised to show 35,000 more jobs than previously reported. A Reuters survey of banks that deal directly with the Fed showed all but one of the so-called primary dealers expect the Fed will hike rates at the Dec. 15-16 meeting. This matter, in turn, will cause further strengthen the dollar.

Capital Market

Iran capital market suffers severely from lack of sufficient liquidity. The total transactions value is incomparable with early 2014. Some part of this negative return in the stock market in last two years is resulted from delay in decision making by the government, regarding to monetary policies & especially about interest rate. The difference in point of view about how to reduce interest rate has caused many problems for the most of industries; increase of inventory is a good evidence of this problem. Although the foreign loan and the foreigner investors are considered as alternatives to 9

Investment Advisory Division compensate lack of domestic investors by governor, but the stock market would not be their first priority. Money market attraction cause stock market experiences moments of difficulty. most of stocks experienced a huge fall and Cap market is in the arrived to 2,714,836 billion Rials, the replacement value in most of corporation is far from the market value today. The signs of improvement in global economy can accelerate the market upward trend. Market return in November was about (0.9)%.

Stock market performance for November has represented in below tables:

Gainers, losers & most wanted:

Gainer industries of month:

Gainer stocks of month:

Loser industries of month:

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Investment Advisory Division

Loser stocks of month:

Most wanted industries & stocks of month:

Money Market

Money market because of its short term nature has played a mediator role between all types of markets to transfer the cash flow. Its return is usually less than other market, but in recession period, since March 2014, investor preferences turned to this market because of lower level risk and negative return of other market. Interest rate of 20% and higher rate for significant amount caused the banker start a destructive competition preventing of decrease in interest rate. It was conflicted with other components of economy and lead to recession intensified. Below table shows the return of all market since the beginning of year till end of 5th month. The interbank rate which was about 28% at the end of last year now decrease to 21.5%. all the markets are ready for interest rate fall as soon as possible. 11

Investment Advisory Division

 Stock market index were subject to some ipo and dividend of annual meeting.

So, money market for second year in row, has recorded highest return.

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