Saudi stocks spent the entire last week with impressive gains. The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) reflecting an upward march throughout the week ended in the green territory at 7,363.13 points, up 215.7 points or 3.02 percent, from its previous weekend close at 7,147.42 points.

Its weekly trading range expanded further to 227.2 points as compared to previous week's 149.3 points.

TASI also logged a healthy YTD return of 8.3 percent.

Total market capitalization of Saudi stock exchange reached at SR 1.48 trillion as compared to previous week's SR 1.44 trillion, an increase of three percent. Micro Cap performed well relatively as it posted a weekly growth of 4.5 percent.

Fourteen out of Tadawul's fifteen sectors witnessed a positive weekly change, accumulating an aggregate of 2,586.4 points.

Insurance sector outperformed (+8.82 percent) recovering a major portion of previous week's losses, closing the week at 1,248.92. Real Estate Development and Retail sectors followed it, rising by 6.6 percent and 5.5 percent respectively.

Only Media sector closed the week a little lower, declining by 0.05 percent.

The Kingdom Holding, bellwether SABIC (Saudi Basic Industries Corp.) and Saudi Telecom Co. were key gainers among heavyweights, surging by 5.67 percent, 3.29 percent and 3.02 percent respectively. Only Saudi Electricity Co. ended the week without any change.

There were 131 net advancing issues for the week, a largely strong market breadth.

Insurance companies won the weekly race among all Saudi stocks, with Sanad Insurance marching higher by 23.2 percent, Wafa Insurance 20.4 percent and AXA Cooperative Insurance 18.4 percent.

General perception of the market participants remained positive; total equity turnover at Tadawul increased to 1.7 billion shares worth SR 34.4 billion. This turnover reflects a weekly growth of 88.1 percent on volume basis and 35.1 percent in terms of liquidity.

Furthermore, upside-downside volume ratio of 71.9:1remained largely positive.

Dar Alarkan Real Estate topped the weekly volume and value charts on the Saudi stock market with a turnover of SR3.8 billion. Its trading volume reached to 413.9 million shares, capturing a relative market share of 24.7 percent.

Atheeb Telecom remained significant advancer among most active stocks, moving up 12.4 percent in a week.

Most of the major benchmark indices at GCC stock markets ended the week in green, with Kuwait Stock Exchange rose 3.2 percent.

The benchmark GulfBase GCC General Index closed the week higher at 4,357.5 points level, adding 62.93 points or 1.47 percent for the entire week.