The Saudi stock market turned green last week, recovering entirely from previous week's losses. Saudi Arabia's benchmark stock index, while moving sideways in a low trading range for most of the week, closed at the end of the week at 7,043.55 points. It accumulated 45.2 points for the entire week, up 0.65 percent. It performed within a narrow trading range of 48.3 points last week. On year-to-date basis, the index showed a collection of 242 points.
Total market capitalization of Saudi stock exchange increased slightly to SR1.44 trillion as compared to previous week's value, an increase of 0.82 percent. Micro cap remained prominent among market cap indices, posting a weekly growth of 2.5 percent.
Sector indices at Tadawul (market) ended the week with modest gains, as 10 out of 15 sectors marched higher, accumulating an aggregate of 1,334 points in a week. Hotel & Tourism turned in a splendid performance among sectoral indices, reflecting an increment of 766.6 points or 9.62 percent for the entire week to close at 8,737.08. Transport and Multi-Investment sectors followed it, advancing 2.5 percent and 2.4 percent respectively.
Most of heavyweights marched higher from previous week's level, with Kingdom Holding increasing by 2.29 percent, SABB 1.92 percent and bellwether SABIC (Saudi Basic Industries Corp.) 1.62 percent.
Weekly market breadth remained favorable as the total number of rising stocks exceeded to the total number of falling stocks by a margin of 95 to 57 and the prices of 4 companies remained unchanged.
Saudi Integrated Telecommunication Co. (Almutakamela) - the worst player of previous week - made the biggest weekly jump among all Saudi equities, surging by 34.46 percent to close at SR 23.8. Tourism Enterprises Co. (Shams) and Alalamiya Cooperative Insurance followed it, rising 23.4 and 18.1 percent respectively.
Amana Cooperative Insurance, on the other hand, delivered a largely negative performance, slipping 25.2 percent to end the week at SR 55.5.
Investors continued to flow an optimal level of turnover; specifically, 1.1 billion shares worth SR 31.3 billion changed hands on the Saudi stock market last week. This turnover reflects a weekly growth of 25.3 percent on volume basis and 16.6 percent in terms of value. Furthermore, upside-downside volume ratio of 3.6:1 remained strong.
Most of the major benchmark indices at GCC stock markets ended the week in green.
The benchmark GulfBase GCC General Index closed the week higher at 4,085.23 points level, adding 35.17 points or 0.87 percent for the entire week.
Tourism sector staysin the limelight
