Tadawul index dips

Tadawul yesterday posted its biggest intra-day decrease since the start of 2012. The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) opened at 7616.01 points, which appeared to be the high level of Tuesday. After a steep decline of 80 points earlier, it subsequently traveled sideways in the negative zone throughout the day to close at 7,518.66. The index pared 97.35 points or 1.28 percent for the entire day. All market cap indices closed the day in negative zone with Med Cap down by 2.6 percent. Most of sectors indices closed in red — Real Estate Development dipped by 3.12 percent, Cement 3.02 percent and Telecommunication & IT 1.7 percent. On the other hand, Energy & Utilities, Industrial Investment and Media and Publishing with 0.8 percent increase remained unharmed. Overall performance of top 10 market cap companies remained negative as all ended in the red territory with Kingdom Holding Co. and Riyad Bank declined by 3.8 percent. Only Saudi Electricity Co. showed a 0.94 percent daily growth among heavy weights. Investors’ excessive enthusiasm reduced but still an adequate level of liquidity moving on, specifically SR18.3 billion were poured into the market. Trading volume was impressive about 876.9 million shares exchanged hands on the Saudi stock market. Alinma Bank dominated the trading activity; with a turnover of 231.1 million shares worth SR3.7 billion it topped the volume and value charts on the Saudi Stock market. It captured 26 percent of the total volume set sold at Tadawul. Decliners outnumbered the advancers by a margin of 109 to 36 and the prices of 5 companies remained unchanged. Basic Chemical Industries with 5.94 percent growth was top gainer of the day. It was followed by Weqaya Takaful insurance, moved up 4.6 percent. Mobile Telecommunications Company (ZAIN) and Dar Alarkan Real Estate were worst performing stocks, down 9.6 and 7.9 percent respectively.