By: Thabet Shehata
Riyadh - Mubasher: The Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) saw a negative performance this week, as it maintained its gains for the fifth week in a row and reached record highs in the last three sessions with a significant growth in traded values.
Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) gained 2.53% or 167.87 points and ended the week at the level of 6,796.75 points, after closing last week at 6,628.88 points.
The Saudi exchange has moved this week from a fluctuation area that began at the level of 5,327 points, to a steadier performance and a rising trend by exceeding the barrier of 6,000 points, until it reached 6700 points, financial analyst Saad Al-Saad told Mubasher.
The rising trend helped carry the main index to its previous high at 6,775 points, with turnovers of nearly SAR 10 billion, until the index reached 6790 points, Al-Saad added.
Meanwhile, the market cap increased by SAR 44.43 billion ($11.85 billion) this week, reaching SAR 1.59 trillion ($423.37 billion) compared to SAR 1.54 trillion ($411.53 billion) by the end of last week.
The market gains were accompanied by a 14% surge in turnovers, as traded values totalled SAR 32.28 billion ($8.6 billion) compared to SAR 28.3 billion ($7.55 million) last week, raising the average turnover to SAR 6.46 billion per session.
On the other hand, traded volumes shrunk by 4.84% to 1.8 billion shares from 1.9 billion shares last week, decreasing the average to 365 million shares per session.
Analyst Al-Saad said that after a rapid rise in turnovers, the intensity slowed down as the market approached the top, as investors began thinking about upcoming important events such as the OPEC meeting on 30 November, the expected interest rate increase by the Federal Reserve, and the anticipation of the Saudi general budget for the upcoming year.
He also expects the market to see marginal instability till Tuesday 30 November, and then the OPEC meeting outcomes will have its effects and implications on the market which he forecasts will remain near the levels of 6,700 points, and that if the index were to break it, it would reach 6,390 or 6,238 points tops.
As for the sectors performance, all of them closed in green except for REITs which lost 3.75%, led by hotels and tourism which added 6%, followed by petrochem and telecom with 4.25% and 2.4% respectively.
Technical analyst, Faisal Al-Sawadi said that the market closed this week near the resistance level of 6,800, the same one seen in April.
Al-Sawadi also belives that Tadawul migh see some marginal setbacks after the contentious rises since the beginning of last October, but it is not expected to go below the level of 6,600 points.
As for the stocks performance, Ash Sharqiyah Development led the gainers and surged 28.68% and closed at the level of SAR 38.95, while Gulf Union was the biggest decliner and dropped 8.3% to SAR 9.47.
Al Marai registered the highest traded values at nearly SAR 8 billion, while Dar Al Arkan was the most active in traded volumes with 499.4 million shares.
Translated by: Moslem Ali
