Tadawul bucks negative trend

The Saudi stock market bucked the prevailing 3-day negative trend and turned green yesterday.
Saudi Arabia’s benchmark stock index yesterday rose 23.79 points to finish at 7,206.27 after trading between 7,182.48 and 7,217.45. While curving in the upward territory throughout the session it added 0.33 percent for the entire day.
Sectoral performance was tremendous, as 13 out of Tadawul’s 15 sectors closed in the green territory, accumulating an aggregate of 239 points.
The Insurance switched its position from worst performing sector of previous day to the top performer of the day, advancing by 0.56 percent and closing at 1,323.40.
Only Transport and Multi-Investment sectors could not manage for gains, trimming less than 20 points jointly.
Top ten heavyweight equities ended the day in a mixed fashion. The losses made by the Kingdom Holding (-0.59 percent) and SABB (-0.56 percent) being offset by rise in Al-Rajhi Bank (+0.75 percent) and the bellwether SABIC (+0.27 percent).
Advancing stocks outnumbered decliners by a margin of 84 to 36 and the prices of 36 companies remained unchanged.
Allianz Saudi Fransi Cooperative Insurance and Sanad Insurance topped the performance chart at Tadawul, soaring up 7.80 percent and 5.05 percent respectively.
Sanad with trades over 4.2 million shares worth SR 132.8 million also positioned itself among the most active stocks, closing the day at SR 31.2.
Market activity was a little low for the day; specifically 128.3 million shares worth SR 3.97 billion were liquidated at Tadawul. This turnover reflects a daily decrease of 5.6 percent on volume basis and roughly ten percent in terms of liquidity.
But upside-downside volume ratio of 1.9:1 remained favorable.