Saudi bourse index continues to fall

The Saudi stock market continued its negative movement, marking another small decline of 0.09 percent yesterday. The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) bouncing between green-red within a low range of 22.3 points ended nearly 6.6 points lower to 7,182.48. On year-to-date basis, the index showed a collection of 381 points or 5.6 percent. Only Large cap among the market cap indices managed to gain slightly. Sectoral performance remained mixed, with six sectors gaining nearly 81.8 points and nine sectors trimming 208.9 points collectively. Hotel & Tourism sector which performed worst for the previous couple of days came out at top and posted 0.4 percent positive change. On the other hand, Insurance sector continued its downward fall for the third consecutive session, declining more than one and half percent to 1,316.02. Six out of top ten heavyweight equities finished to the upside, with SABB advancing by 1.4 percent and Saudi Telecom 0.5 percent. Most active stocks also showed a positive change, with Saudi Fisheries Co. increasing by 2.7 percent and Dar Alarkan Real Estate 1.2 percent. The market breadth with advance-decline ratio of 0.46:1 remained unfavorable. Insurance companies led the top gainer and loser charts, with Arabian Shield Cooperative Insurance and Al Ahlia Insurance, offsetting their performance by 4.8 percent positive-negative change. Share trading began to taper off, as Tadawul volume set sold approximately 136 million shares, a decrease of 19.6 percent as compared to previous level. The volume also remained 32 percent below the 50-day average of 200 million shares. Liquidity also shrank to SR 4.4 billion, 25.6 percent lower than the 50-day average of SR 5.9 billion. Source: ArabNews