(MENAFN - Arab News) The Saudi stock market has been marching relentlessly higher since the start of 2012. Even the rally sustained for several weeks in a row on the back of various sensational records of high volume and huge turnover as well.
Though Tadawul has suffered a weekly dip of nearly 28 points when weekly volume rose to a record high of 4.5 billion shares and perhaps the scenario was conceived to be a bubble technically but investors remained undeterred, actively participated in the market and sustained the overall uptrend.
Decent gains of 3.22 percent and 1.45 percent for the subsequent two weeks also proved that the upward trend would likely to continue for any indefinite period.
However, on the weekly chart, the Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) while bouncing in the green territory for most of the sessions, surged near 8,000 points mark but closed the weekend below this round number at 7,895.36 points. It accumulated 112.52 points for the entire week, up 1.45 percent.
All market cap indices ended the week in the positive zone, with Small Cap up by 3.39 percent to close at 4,200.82.
Sectoral performance was tremendous during the week, as all sectors closed in green except Energy & Utilities, Banking and Real Estate, which pared an aggregate of 548.5 points for the week.
Media and Publishing sector outperformed, up 7.21 percent for the week to close at 2789.38 points. On the other hand, Energy & Utilities counterbalanced and minimized intra-week gains by shedding 6.62 percent.
Investors continued to flow an optimal level of turnover; specifically, 2.99 billion shares worth SR71.7 billion exchanged hands on the Saudi stock market last week.
Furthermore, upside-downside volume ratio was 1.8:1. Surprisingly, weekly market breadth with advance-decline ratio of 1.8:1, exactly matched.
Total market capitalization of Saudi stock exchange reached at SR1.55 trillion as compared to previous week's SR1.53 trillion, an increase of 1.07 percent.
Saudi Mobile Telecommunications (Zain) and Alinma Bank continued their leading positions and remained as most active stocks through the week.
Zain with trades of over 493.2 million shares captured roughly 16.5 percent of total volume set sold at Tadawul. While, Alinma Bank liquidated SR5.4 billion, reflecting a relative market share of 7.5 percent.
