JEDDAH, 24 August 2005 — The 1,124.29 points plunge in the Industrial sector index sent Saudi stock market down 155.79 points yesterday as the Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) closed at 14,587.91 points.
The Industrial index closed 2.88 percent lower at 37,913.02.
Saudi Basic Industries Corp. stock closed 3.66 percent lower yesterday at SR1,580. Zamil Industrial stock was also trading 5.80 percent down at SR552.
The Banking index also suffered 218.79 points fall at 32,656.06 yesterday. The Electrical index was also down 15.31 points yesterday at 2,571.50.
However, the Telecom index gained 106.95 points to close yesterday at 5,676.83 points while the Cement index edged up 12.97 points at 9,207.02 despite most of the cement stocks were trading lower except Yanbu Cement and Eastern Cement.
The Agriculture index dropped 22.03 points yesterday at 4,716.30.
Out of 77 stocks traded yesterday, 42 were down while 33 were up.
Ibrahim Al-Rabeesh, financial analyst and investor, described the joyful atmosphere among stock traders because of the Monday’s announcement by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to increase salary for all government employees by 15 percent.
He said that this announcement reflected positively in the stock market on Monday. He however said that the increase in salary will not directly affect the stock market but small investors will tend to save the additional increase in income and enter into the stock market and the forthcoming initial public offerings (IPOs).
He added that since most of the government employees are active in stock market, part of the additional available money will go into the market.
