Dubai: Emaar Properties and Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) extended losses on Tuesday, pushing the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) index into negative territory.

The DFM General Index shed 0.39 per cent to close at 3,643.37 as both Emaar and DIB continued to slide.

Analysts contend that the bourse’s outlook hinges on the fate of the two blue-chip companies.

Dubai Islamic Bank closed at a low of Dh6.04, down 1.47 per cent, with the stock seeing an increase in volume of shares traded, at 11 million shares, the highest volume since mid-July.

“DIB needs to hold further declines, if broken a negative reversal will take place,” said Hisham Khairy, Head of Institutional Trading at Menacorp.

Emaar Properties closed 0.58 per cent lower at Dh8.60.

“Emaar, as expected, continued its weakness [and] closed almost at [a] session low. Volume is increasing, signalling a potential rebound anytime soon. Ultimate support that needs to be held is Dh8.40, if broken the whole story will change and would be very negative,” Khairy said.

Islamic Arab Insurance Company, also known as Salama, gained 0.36 per cent to end the day at Dh0.561 while Union Properties surged 2 per cent higher to close at Dh0.877.

Air Arabia, however, closed 1.59 per cent lower at Dh1.29.

“Air Arabia reached all our targets now and [we] would book profits around here. We expect the stock to take a breather before continuing its uptrend,” Khairy said.

Total traded value on the DFM stood at more than Dh500 million.

“DFM market volume has been on the rise, which is very positive especially [since] we are in a strong resistance area that’s not easy to break,” Khairy said. “Monday [saw] the highest traded volume this month, which we haven’t seen since June. [The] index did nothing [and] closed flat, mainly due to some selling pressure on blue-chips like Emaar and DIB.”

The Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) witnessed a mixed trend, with the ADX General Index shedding 0.77 per cent to close at 4,488.72.

Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank closed (ADIB) ended the day’s session higher, while First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) and Dana Gas ended the day lower.

ADIB closed 0.79 per cent higher at Dh3.82 while Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank was down 0.81 per cent to close at Dh7.37 and Dana Gas fell 2.67 per cent to end at Dh0.73.

Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul All Share Index continued to trade below the 7,000 mark, with the index ending the day at 6,979.75.

“We have been underweight [on] the kingdom for the most part of this year, simply because our bottom-up approach is currently not identifying attractive, mispriced and/or growth stocks opportunities in the market,” Al Mal Capital said in a note. “We remain very selective in the Saudi, but are turning more optimistic of 2018.”

Elsewhere in the Gulf region, the Qatar Exchange index closed 0.85 per cent lower at 8,229.27 while the Muscat MSM 30 index fell 0.13 per cent to close at 5,088.71.