KUWAIT CITY - Trading at the Kuwait Stock Exchange was halted on Thursday following a court order aimed at halting the market's slide and preventing massive losses among small investors.The bourse management said it decided to halt trade until Monday after receiving the court order, a move unprecedented in the history of the market which was established in the mid-1970s and is now the second largest in the Arab world."The administrative court ordered that trading be suspended immediately at the bourse until November 17 when the court will sit again to look into the issue," a legal source told AFP.

Thursday is the last trading day of the week in the oil-rich Gulf state.

The court issued its ruling after a lawsuit filed by lawyer Adel Abdulhadi on behalf of an investor who claimed he had incurred heavy losses on the Kuwait market over the past few weeks.

When trading was halted, the KSE Index had shed 1.8 percent, dragged down by the banks and investment sectors. The bourse has been trading at 40-month lows.

The court ruling said the order was made to spare investors from heavy losses after the market plunged.

The lawsuit was filed against the prime minister, the commerce minister who is the head of the bourse committee and the director general of the bourse, court papers showed.

The ruling also said that the court found that the bourse management failed to take any measures to boost the flagging market.