The MASI is the number everyone cites when they talk about the Moroccan stock market. Here's what it actually measures, how it works, and what to look for when the number moves.
MASI stands for Moroccan All Shares Index. It is the main benchmark of the Bourse de Casablanca (BVC), Morocco's only stock exchange. Every company listed on the BVC is included in the MASI. That currently means roughly 78 stocks, from large banks and industrial conglomerates to small real estate developers and tech firms.
When someone says "the market is up 1.2% today," they almost always mean the MASI rose 1.2%. It serves the same role that the CAC 40 plays in France or the S&P 500 plays in the United States — except the MASI includes all listed companies, not just a selected subset.
The index is published continuously during trading hours (09:30 to 15:30, Monday through Friday, Moroccan time) and is managed by the Bourse de Casablanca itself. You can follow it live on the Dalil MASI page.
The MASI is a free-float weighted index. That means each stock's influence on the index depends not on its total market capitalization, but on the value of its shares that actually trade on the open market.
Here's why that matters. A company like OCP Group has an enormous total market cap, but the Moroccan state holds a large majority of its shares. Those shares don't trade. The MASI only counts the portion available to regular investors — the free float.
At any moment, the MASI value equals:
MASI = (Sum of each stock's price × free-float shares) / Divisor × 1000
The divisor is an adjustment factor maintained by the BVC. It changes when companies are added, removed, or when corporate actions (stock splits, rights issues) would otherwise distort the index. The divisor ensures that these technical events don't create fake moves in the headline number.
The BVC assigns each stock a free-float factor — a number between 0 and 1 that represents the proportion of shares available for public trading. Shares held by governments, founding families, or strategic partners that never trade are excluded. This factor is reviewed periodically and published by the exchange.
The consequence: a company with a MAD 50 billion market cap but only 15% free float has less weight in the MASI than a company with a MAD 30 billion market cap and 60% free float. The index reflects what you can actually buy and sell.
Because the MASI is weighted by free-float market cap, a handful of large, liquid stocks dominate the index. Understanding which ones matter most is essential to reading the daily number.
The Casablanca market is heavily concentrated in a few sectors:
This means the MASI is not a balanced picture of the Moroccan economy. It overrepresents finance and telecoms. A strong day for the banking sector can pull the whole index up even if most other stocks are flat or down.
On any given day, the MASI moves because of:
When you look at the MASI on any trading day, you see two things: the index level (a number, currently in the range of 12,000–15,000) and the daily percent change.
The absolute number of the MASI is not very useful on its own. It doesn't represent a price in dirhams. It's an arbitrary scale, set to 1,000 at the index's inception, that has grown over decades. What matters is how it changes over time — day to day, week to week, year to date.
The daily percent change compares the current index value to the previous session's closing value. A few rules of thumb for the Casablanca market:
Casablanca is a less volatile market than, say, Cairo or Lagos. Multi-percent daily swings are rare outside of crisis periods. If the MASI drops 2% in a single day, that is a significant event worth investigating.
A 0.5% move on high volume tells a different story than the same move on thin trading. The BVC publishes daily trading volume in dirhams. On a typical day, total exchange turnover might be MAD 100–300 million. Sessions above MAD 500 million suggest strong institutional activity or block trades.
The BVC publishes a second index called the MASI20. It tracks only the 20 most liquid stocks on the exchange, selected by trading frequency and volume. Think of it as the blue-chip subset of the broader MASI.
For most individual investors following the market, the MASI is the number to watch. The MASI20 becomes relevant if you're comparing fund performance or analyzing whether market strength is broad-based or concentrated in a few names.
Knowing how the MASI works is one thing. Using that knowledge is another. A few practical notes:
The MASI is a useful compass, but it is not the whole map. It tells you the general direction of the Casablanca market. It does not tell you which stocks are cheap, which sectors are growing, or whether it's a good time to buy. For that, you need to look beneath the index at individual companies and their fundamentals.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Market data on Dalil is delayed. Verify prices with your broker before making investment decisions.
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