Tadawul index nudges up

The Saudi Stock Market bucked the prevailing 3-day negative trend yesterday and turned green with impressive gains. The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) opened at 6,989.45 points, which proved to be the intra-day low, subsequent trading sent the index up 67.24 points or 0.96 percent to close at 7,056.68 points. On YTD basis, the index has achieved a yield of 9.96 percent. Sectoral performance was tremendous, as all sectors closed in green and accumulated an aggregate of nearly 785 points. Telecommunication & IT sector remained at top showing an increment of 1.86 percent to close at 2,176.21 points. It was followed by Retail sector, which added 107.36 points, an increase of 1.5 percent. Among large cap stocks; Samba Financial Group surged by 1.71 percent and closed at SR47.5, followed by Saudi Electricity Co. and Al-Rajhi Bank which advanced over 1.14 and 1.03 percent respectively, while SABB slipped 1.43 percent, to close at SR34.5. Market participants responded positively as turnover at Tadawul went up by 21.2 percent to roughly 279 million shares; its total liquidity of SR5.7 billion increased by 13 percent over the previous trading day. Atheeb Telecom with trades over 43.9 million shares worth SR789 million remained as the most active stock of the day. Market breadth was largely positive, whereby 129 symbols closed in green and 11 closed in red, while 11 remained unchanged. Saudi Mobile Telecommunications (Zain) and Atheeb outdid rest of its peers as prices of both increased by 9.94 percent and 7.33 percent respectively.