(MENAFN - Arab News) Saudi stocks regained strength yesterday as the value of traded shares surged to SR 10.92 billion.
Analysts attributed the sharp increase in the total value to the market entry of National Medical Care Company.
"I do believe that we will continue to see such spikes in the volume of trading during March as more annual general assemblies are held to approve dividends and capital increases," Tamer El Zayat, senior economist at the National Commercial Bank (NCB), told Arab News.
After opening at SR 81, the National Medical shares closed at SR 122. On the first day, it recorded a substantial gain of 351.8 percent. But Fawaz Al-Fawaz, a Riyadh-based economic consultant, said: "The jump is of technical nature."
The new issue of the National Medical accounted for roughly SR 5.8 billion out of the total volume for the day, he pointed out.
Al-Fawaz said: "The market has been somewhat stable since the beginning of the year. The Tadawful index is up about 3.30 percent since the beginning of the year."
Farouk Miah, head-equity research at NCB Capital, commented: "The increase in volumes today was purely due to the listing of National Medical Care Company. The same thing happened earlier this year when Northern Cement was listed and in the past with other listings."
The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) surged over 38.9 points, or 0.56 percent, to close at 7,025.37 yesterday.
El Zayat added: "The market, in my opinion, is still caught in a range-bound channel and lagging the euphoria that is prevailing across the board for global equities, with Dow Jones registering a historical record above the 14,400 mark and growing optimism about the global economy propelling the MSCI All-Country World Index of equities to a 56-month high."
He said: "The Saudi market is not only decoupling from global equities, but also from the robust domestic macroeconomic fundamentals and strong corporate earnings, thus a range-bound movement is the likely scenario over the next few weeks."
