Tourism equities take a dip

08/05/2015 10:58 AST

Saudi Arabia’s benchmark Tadawul All-Share Index ended Thursday's trading in the red at 9,717.9 points, down 63.79 points or 0.65 percent from its previous day close.

It plunged to a maximum of 1.21 percent during the day.

Small cap suffered worst of market cap indices, the GulfBase said in its market commentary. Only Multi-Investment sector showed a nominal positive change among sectoral indices. Remaining 14 sectors lost an aggregate of 1,070 points.

Hotel & Tourism sector posted the largest losses, falling 1.74 percent and trimming back the 24,000-mark.

Media and Publishing sector followed it, declining 1.63 percent for the day.

Top ten heavyweight equities finished to the downside, with Saudi Telecom Co. dipping by 2.13 percent, Jabal Omar Development Co. 2.0 percent and big player SABIC (Saudi Basic Industries Corp.) 0.74 percent.

The total number of falling stocks exceeded to the total number of rising stocks by a huge margin of 117 to 25.

Share price of Saudi Re for Cooperative Reinsurance dived to a decline of 3.8 percent, closing the day at SR 11.4.

On the other positive side, recently traded Middle East Paper Co. (MEPCO) continued its upward march, up 9.82 percent further to SR 48.1.

The company also topped the value chart, pumping SR 1.2 billion into the market, a relative market share of 15.5 percent. Interestingly, its volume was 8,360 percent higher than that of Wednesday, liquidating 25.3 million shares.

It was eighth consecutive win of Al Sorayai Trading on Thursday, but extent of gains was small.

Most of the trading was concentrated in Dar Al-Arkan Real Estate with 34.6 million shares, capturing 12.4 percent of Tadawul volume.

More than 279 million shares worth SR 7.8 billion poured into the market. But overall turnover remained below the 50-day average level, ranging from 14-to-18 percent.

GulfBase.com