Market cap falls to SR 1.32 trillion

The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI), which continued its descending travel throughout the week, ended in the red territory at 6,659.58 points, down 175.19 points or 2.56 percent from its previous weekend close at 6,834.77 points. The index touched an intra-week high of 6,872.74 and low of 6,628.69 levels, showing a trading range of 244.05 points last week. Total market capitalization of Saudi stock exchange reached at SR1.32 trillion as compared to previous week's SR1.35 trillion, a decrease of 2.4 percent. Large Cap performed worst among the market cap indices, declining 2.7 percent in a week. Sectoral performance was largely negative, as 12 out of the 15 sectors closed in downward territory, paring an aggregate of 1,730 points for the entire week. The Real Estate Development sector switched its position from top performer of previous week to the worst performing sector of the week, down 9.20 percent. Industrial Investment sector followed it, declining by 3.72 percent for the week. Insurance sector advanced 2.2 percent over the week, posting the biggest gains among all sectors. Share trading activity remained more than ten percent higher as compared to previous week; specifically, 1.8 billion shares worth SR33.8 billion exchanged hands on the Saudi stock market last week. Dar Alarkan Real Estate topped the weekly volume and value charts on the Saudi stock market with a turnover of SR6.3 billion. Its trading volume reached to 648.4 million shares, capturing a relative market share of 36.9 percent. The market breadth was in the favor of bears as out of 155 issues traded last week only 52 were able to close higher. Furthermore, upside-downside volume ratio was 0.3:1. Surprisingly, AMANA Insurance with 51.2 percent positive change and Enaya Insurance with 21.2 percent negative change, continued to top the weekly gainer and loser charts for the second straight week. All benchmark indices at GCC stock markets ended the week in red. The benchmark GulfBase GCC General Index also lost 45.84 points or 1.2 percent for the entire week to close at 3796.46 points level. From arabnews