Jeddah, July 05: After falling 0.17 percent last week, the Saudi stock market continued its downward movement on Saturday.
Petrochemical and banking stocks led the Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) to a lower close after rising over the previous three sessions.
The index closed 2.35 percent down at 5,467.81 points on Saturday, its lowest close since April 27.
Almost all the sectors across the board were negative with only Cement Sector closing with a gain of 2.36 percent and sector losses ranged from 0.24 percent by Transport to 4.58 percent by Petrochemical Industries. Market breadth was strongly negative, with 21 advancers and 101 decliners posting an AD ratio of 0.21, the Jeddah-based Financial Transaction House said yesterday in its market commentary.
“The market has reacted in line with the continuous decline for the third week of the US and European markets. Even the liquidity remained low at SR4.6 billion with investors taking sidelines before the second quarter earnings reports,” Faisal Alsayrafi, managing director and CEO of FTH, said.
Largest-listed Saudi Basic Industries Corp.(SABIC) shares ended 6.4 percent lower at SR58.5, its lowest close in two months.
Alujain Corporation shares plunged by 5.29 percent to SR18.80, Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Co. by 5.13 percent to SR12.95, Sahara Petrochemical by 5 percent to SR19 and Advanced Polypropylene Co. by 4.23 percent to SR24.90 on Saturday.
Alinma Bank shares also fell 1.14 percent to SR13.05 despite the lender announcing earlier in the day the launch of its banking services. Alinma Bank has opened its first nine branches, including three for women only.
Qassim Cement Co. was the top gainer on Saturday as its shares surged by 9.87 percent to SR128, their highest close since Sept. 3, 2008.
The company plans to offer shareholders one bonus share for each existing one in a bonus capital hike.
According to the Tadawul Statiscal Report First Half 2009 at the end of the first half of 2009 TASI closed at 5,596.46 points, lost 3,755.86 points or 40.16 percent over the close of the same period of the previous year.
On an YTD basis TASI registered a positive return of 793.47 points or 16.52 percent. The index closed at its highest level of 6,100.85 points on May 23.
Total equity market capitalization at the end of first half reached SR1.07 trillion ($286.49 billion), down by 39.46 percent over the end of the same period of the previous year.
The total value of shares traded dropped by 39.38 percent to reach SR780.05 billion ($208.01 billion).
However, the total number of shares traded (adjusted) increased by 11.90 percent to 38.07 billion shares for the first half of 2009 compared to 34.02 billion shares traded during the same period of the previous year. The total number of transactions executed declined by 27.59 percent to 22.63 million compared to 31.25 million trades during the first half of the previous year.
Number of trading days during first half of 2009 were 129, against 130 trading during the same period of 2008.
The Tadawul report also said total amount of traded shares in the Saudi stock market for the month of June 2009 was SR149.28 billion, down 30.2 percent from the previous month where the value of the traded shares was SR194.4 billion.
The percentage share of Saudi nationals from the market trades was 92.7 percent (SR138.45 billion) for selling and 91.7 percent (SR136.94 billion) for buying.
The percentage share of Saudi companies from the market trades was 1.87 percent for selling (SR2.79 billion) and 3.06 percent (SR4.57 billion) for buying.
-Agencies