TEHRAN- TEDPIX, the main index of Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), rose 853,000 points to 1.436 million on Monday.

As reported, over 7.562 billion securities worth 56.57 trillion rials (about $1.346 billion) were traded at the TSE on Monday.

The first market’s index rose 4,187 points, and the second market’s index lost 9,421 points.

TEDPIX fell 6.5 percent in the past Iranian calendar week (ended on Friday).

The index lost 91,000 points to close at 1.397 million.

During the past week, the indices of Social Security Investment Company, Bandar Abbas Refinery, Isfahan Refining Company, Sepid Makian Company, and Barekat Pharmaceutical Group were the most widely followed ones.

It’s over two years that stock market in Iran has been playing an outstanding role in the attraction of the people’s investment.

Iranian people, who used to invest their money in some traditional ways such as buying gold, or deposit money in the banks, have taken a new approach for investment over the past two years, as they have been investing more and more in the stock market.

Different factors have created such condition, among them it could be referred to the efforts made by the stock market to attract people’s more investment through laying the proper ground, for example via introducing new financial instruments, and also by making people more acquainted with this market.

The other factor is the government’s policy and new approach toward the stock market, and putting emphasis on this market’s role in funding and economic growth.

The status of the parallel markets such as forex, housing, and gold markets has also made stock market a more attractive place for the people to invest in.

Meanwhile, the government’s policy of lowering the interest rate of the bank deposits has redirected a huge amount of people’s investment to the stock market.

In an interview last month, a director in Iran Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO) has announced that the fixed income funds have lagged the banks behind in attracting the people’s investment.

Saying that the risk of investing in the fixed income funds is very low and these funds now pay regular returns to investors at good rates, Meysam Fadaei, the SEO’s director for supervising the financial entities, underlined that these funds are one of the largest mutual funds that have been welcomed by the people, and some of them have even grown more than some banks and attracted more capital.

“Now, for example, one of the fixed income funds has succeeded in attracting people’s investment three times more than a private bank (Middle East Bank) and another fund twice as much as another private bank (Post Bank)”, he stated.

Announcing that over 5.3 quadrillion rials (about $126.19 billion) has been already attracted by the mutual funds, Fadaei said that the fixed income funds, which pay more interest than banks, account for attracting 3.7 quadrillion rials (about $88.095 billion) of the mentioned figure.

MA/MA