The Casablanca Stock Exchange returned to positive momentum in August after two months of consolidation, with the MASI index gaining 4.53 percent to 18,652.72 points, trimming its year-to-date decline to 1.03 percent, according to a research note from brokerage BKGR reported by Boursenews.
The firm cautioned the rebound looks more like a normalization after months of profit-taking than the start of a new broad-based rally, coming after three years of strong market appreciation.
The recovery remains uneven across the index. The MASI 20 gained just 1.85 percent in August and remains down 9.67 percent since the start of the year, with the rebound driven mainly by mining stocks, particularly Managem, which surged 31.16 percent over the month to become the Casablanca exchange’s largest listed company by market capitalization. This divergence has led BKGR to conclude the market is now behaving more like a stock-picker’s environment than one moving in a broad, unified direction, with company-specific catalysts increasingly taking over from overall market momentum.
Trading activity offered a more encouraging signal, with average daily volume reaching 267.3 million dirhams in August, up from 147.9 million in July, particularly toward the end of the period. BKGR cautioned against over-interpreting this improvement, however, noting that central-market trading volumes remain down 54 percent year-on-year, while volatility climbed to 13.96 percent from 10.54 percent a month earlier.
BKGR expects September to serve as a genuine test of selectivity for the Casablanca market, as investors digest first-half 2026 results and any resulting earnings-per-share revisions, alongside upcoming decisions from Bank Al-Maghrib.
The brokerage said market performance should increasingly reflect issuers’ underlying fundamentals going forward, favoring stocks with clear earnings visibility and well-identified catalysts over broader index-driven moves.
