By: Thabet Shehata
Riyadh - Mubasher: The Saudi Stock Exchange closed Monday’s trading session in red on the back of the negative performance of the majority of petrochem stocks led by SABIC, while the energy sector gains helped offset the market losses.
Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) lost 0.85% or 60.74 points and closed at the level of 7,076.88 points.
Tadawul’s performance on Monday was not good due to the pressure from the blue chip SABIC stock, after the company announced on Sunday the distribution of cash dividends at 20%, which didn’t please the majority of shareholders, technical analyst Amer Al-Shahri.
Al-Shahri added that the market was able to maintain a strong support level at 7,040 points, which might be a good indicator that signals the return to gains if it maintained levels above this area, especially since some stocks have reached the peak of selling activity such as SABIC which he believes might see a stable performance tomorrow.
Traded values increased to around SAR 5 billion ($1.3 billion) compared to SAR 4.7 billion ($1.25 billion) on Sunday’s session, while traded volumes reached 278.9 million shares up from 252.87 million shares yesterday.
If the main index were to break the levels of 7,040 this could represent a huge pressure that might lead to reaching new lows.
As for the sectors performance, the petrochemicals sector saw the biggest decline at 2.4% as SABIC dropped 3.6% to SAR 91.75, while SAFCO lost 1.8% to the level of SAR 76.25.
The banks sector decreased by 0.25%, as Al-Ahli and Al-Rajhi went down by 1.52% and 0.65% closing at SAR 41.6 and SAR 63.5 respectively.
The telecom sector index lost 0.32% after all of its stocks declined except for Mobily which gained 0.2% to the level of SAR 24.65, while STC and Zain slipped 0.03% and 1.64% respectively.
On the other hand, the energy sector added 1.47% as Saudi Electricity increased by 1.6% and closed at SAR 20.8, while GASCO lost 0.4% to the level of SAR 31.5.
Al-Khodari led the session’s gainers and surged 9.4% and closed at SAR 13.5, while Anaam International led the decliners and dropped 4.75% to SAR 16.25.
SABIC registered the highest turnover at SAR 675 million, while Dar Al Arkan was the most active in traded volumes with 60.2 million shares.
