Media , Publishing sector surges 1.5%

The Saudi stock market continued its negative movement, marking another small decline of 0.19 percent yesterday. Saudi Arabia’s benchmark stock index (TASI) bouncing between green-red within a range of 28.9 points finished nearly 14 points lower to 7,319.82 points. It went 6.9 points above and 22.0 points below the break-even line during the day. On year-to-date basis, the index showed a collection of 518.6 points or 7.63 percent. Only Small cap among the market cap indices managed to gain slightly. Most of the sector indices including Retail — the worst performer (down 0.6 percent) closed a little bit lower, paring an aggregate of 236.7 points jointly. On the positive side, Media and Publishing outdid rest of the sectors for the second consecutive day, surging 1.5 percent further and finishing near 3,000-mark. Saudi Research and Marketing Group remained key gainer in this sector, surging by 6.35 percent and closing at SR 20.95. Most of heavy weights closed in red, showing small declines from previous level. SABB, however, continued its positive movement, posting another 0.84 percent daily growth. The market breadth with advance-decline ratio of 0.46:1 remained unfavorable. Tabuk Cement Co. dominated the performance among all Saudi equities, topping the gainer chart with 8.3 percent positive change, closing the day at SR 31.3. Tadawul volume went slightly down further by 2.12 percent and traded roughly 228 million shares but still it was 4.53 percent greater than 50-day average of 218.12 million shares. Bank Albilad appeared to be the most active stock for the day. Its volume set sold 26.5 million shares, which are about 11.6 percent of the overall market volume. The value of these shares reached to SR 656.6 million, which equates 11.3 percent of Tadawul liquidity. Source: ArabNews