Positive sentiment at Tadawul

A bull run in the Saudi stock market persisted to drive profits to a new level on Sunday. The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) surged over the day with impressive gains, reflecting positive sentiment of the market. However, profit-taking in Insurance stocks minimized the intra-day gains. TASI added 52.47 points, or 0.7 percent, to end at 7,533.74. On Year-to-date basis, it showed a yield of 17.39 percent. All market cap indices traded in the positive zone, with Micro Cap up by 1.3 percent. Thirteen out of the 15 sectors led by Multi-Investment (+3.1 percent) ended with modest gains on Sunday while Insurance and Cement slipped into the red, both losing 25 points for the day. The top gainers among large cap stocks were Kingdom Holding and Saudi Electricity Co., which rose by 8.96 percent and 2.7 percent respectively. Tadawul witnessed more buying interest as the volume of shares traded increased by 18.3 percent to reach 651.9 million shares. In addition, the value of shares traded increased by 7.6 percent to reach SR14.4 billion. On the other hand, the number of transactions increased by 7.3 percent to reach 252,222 trades. Alinma Bank dominated the trading activity; with a turnover of 102.5 million shares worth SR1.3 billion it topped the volume and value charts on the Saudi Stock market. It captured 16 percent of the total volume set sold at Tadawul. Advances outnumbered the decliners by a margin of 89 to 43 and the prices of 18 companies remained unchanged. Tihama Advertising & Public Relations Co. and Saudi Integrated Telecom Company showing notable gains of 9.9 percent became the top performers among all Saudi scrips. On the other hand, Insurance stocks performed worst with Allianz Saudi Fransi Cooperative Insurance continuing to slide in the red for the second consecutive day, down 9.9 percent.