By: Waleed Abd El-Salam
Riyadh - Mubasher: The Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) ended Monday’s trading session in the red zone, after closing three consecutive sessions in green, as most of the market sector indices ended the session in decline.
Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) lost 0.34% or 24.59 points and closed at the level of 7,166.36 points.
Financial analyst, Mohammed Al-Maymouni, told Mubasher that he believes that the Saudi market is yet to see more rises, supported by the recently announced public budget for the upcoming year, which helped raise the investors’ confidence, and change the negative sentiment towards the market.
Traded values decreased to SAR 4.62 billion ($1.23 billion) compared to SAR 5.54 billion ($1.48 billion) on Sunday, and traded volumes also declined to 235.11 million shares from 319.3 million shares by the end of last session.
Al-Maymouni noted that the recent amendments and decisions regarding energy and fuel subsidies as well as labour tax will not have a clear effect on the market until the fourth quarter of the upcoming year.
As for the sectors performance, 13 sector indexes closed in red, led by media and publishing which went down by 2.43%, as Printing and Packaging as well as Marketing and Research decreased by 2.9% and 1.72% and closed at SAR 20.4 and SAR 33.8 respectively.
The petrochem sector lost 0.43% as Saudi Kayan and Petro Rabigh declined by 2.52% and 2.32% respectively, while SABIC and SAFCO slipped 0.33% each.
The banks sector levelled down 0.2% as Al Rajhi, SABB, and Alinma decreased by 0.4%, 0.4%, and 0.27% respectively.
On the other hand, REITs, insurance, in addition to hotels and tourism added 1.11%, 0.58%, and 0.5% respectively.
Al-Maymouni also indicated that the market is still technically moving in a rising trend on the long run, despite not being able to exceed the resistance level of 7,200 points many times, it was able to maintain the support level between 7,000 and 7,100 points.
Tadawul is still expected to continue its horizontal movement until the announcement of the financial results of the companies that can be a great support for the market, he added.
Tihama led the session’s gainers and surged 9.9%, while Saudi Chemical led the decliners and dropped 4.8%.
Meanwhile, SABIC registered the highest turnover at SAR 254.2 million, while Dar Al Arkan was the most active in traded volumes with 178.2 million shares.
Translated by: Moslem Ali
