TEHRAN- TEDPIX, the main index of Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), fell 18,259 points to 1.561 million on Wednesday.

Some 6.592 billion securities worth 92.806 trillion rials (about $2.209 billion) were traded at the TSE on Wednesday.

The first market’s index fell 20,409 points and the second market’s index dropped 9,181 points.

TEDPIX rose 2.5 percent during the past Iranian week, while it had dropped seven percent in the week ended on October 2.

Since the week ended on August 14, the TSE, which is Iran’s major stock exchange, witnessed drop of its main index every week, except for the week ended on September 18.

The index dropped 5.7 percent in the week ended on September 25, and four percent in the week ended on September 11, while it had also experienced a five-percent decrease in the week ended on September 4, a two-percent fall in the week ended on August 28, an 11.3-percent drop in the week ended on August 21, and a two-percent fall in the week ended on August 14.

TEDPIX had hit the record high of two million points on August 2, and while it had been experiencing an unprecedented trend of rising over the recent months, it witnessed several weekly drops since mid-August.

While Iran’s stock market has not received any external shocks such as those form the foreign currency exchange rate, inflation, parallel markets, and international issues, some internal factors have caused the recent drops in this market.

Last week, Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Farhad Dejpasand said that the government is going to continue implementing development programs to help flourishing the capital market.

“The stock market situation is not measured only by the fluctuations of its index. The Iranian stock exchange is in the process of becoming a modern stock market,” Dejpasand said.

The Tehran Stock Exchange’s main index has dropped nearly 600,000 points in less than two months and the shares of some companies have faced a loss of up to 70 percent.

Factors like the increase in the number of members, the growth of the value of transactions, and the expansion of instruments are also indicators of a deepening and growing trend in the market and the index should not be the only factor for evaluating a market, the minister said.

MA/MA