TADAWUL: TASI drops below 8,000-point mark

Saudi Arabia’s benchmark Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) continued its negative movement, marking another decline of 0.32 percent Monday.
Spending almost entire session in the downward territory it lost 25.85 points to finish at 7,976.8 points level. The index went to a maximum of 61.6 points down from the level of opening bell on Monday.
Micro cap indices continued to post the largest losses, going down by 1.45 percent. Only three out of Tadawul’s 15 sectors witnessed a positive change, accumulating 56.5 points merely.
Multi-Investment sector has been showing a volatile performance for the previous few days, flip-flopping in the top and worst positions consecutively. Again the sector turned green, gaining slightly by 0.4 percent and closing at 3,685.07.
On the negative side, twelve sectors slipped from previous day’s level, paring an aggregate of 718 points. Retail and Tourism suffered worst of all sectors, showing a reduction of 2.01 percent and 1.51 percent respectively.
Most of heavyweights extended gains, with Kingdom Holding increasing by 2.35 percent, Riyad Bank 2.30 percent and bellwether SABIC (Saudi Basic Industries Corp.) 1.28 percent.
The total number of falling stocks exceeded to the total number of rising stocks by a margin of 120 to 23.
Makkah Construction and Development Co. and Southern Province Cement played well among all Saudi companies, surging by 3.78 percent and 3.27 percent respectively.
On the other hand, Saudi Transport and Investment Company (Mubarrad) repeated the worst performance of previous day, topping the decliner chart with 9.9 percent negative change.
Most of the trading was concentrated in Alinma Bank, which liquidated 33.7 million shares, a relative market share of 19.4 percent. It also pumped more liquidity into the market, contributing roughly SR480 million.
More than 173.8 million shares worth SR4.8 billion exchanged hands on the Saudi stock market. The 50-day average for trading volume is closer to 222.7 million shares.