Tadawul posts record turnover

Trading activity and investors' emotions at the Saudi stock market appeared to be extremely volatile yesterday. Consequently, total volume surged to a new high at 878.5 million shares, led by Mobile Telecommunications-Zain, which represented a relative market share of 23 percent. This turnover surpassed the previous record of highest volume logged a few days back when 781.5 million shares were traded. Investors were more inclined to buy Saudi stocks and a substantial liquidity of SR18 billion was poured into the market. The number of executed transactions reached 305,556 trades, an increase of 5 percent over the previous day. Tadawul's trading activity and performance was dominated by Mobile Telecommunications Company (Zain), which liquidated more than 204.9 million shares worth SR2.9 billion to close the day at SR11.1. It jumped to 9.9 percent for the day and remained as top gainer among all Saudi stocks. The Tadawul All-Share Index (TASI) stepped up further to close at 7,615.69 points yesterday. Tadawul's impetus resulted from another surge of buying from a pack of investors. TASI earlier slid into red territory and subsequently traveled sideways throughout the day and finally edged up to add nominal 15.12 points or 0.2 percent for the day. Three out of four market cap indices traded in the positive zone, with Med Cap up by 0.68 percent to close at 5,242.52. Furthermore, the performance of all sectors was mingled as eight out of Tadawul's 15 sectors witnessed advancement. Real Estate development sector secured its top position of the previous day, showing a daily growth of 2.49 percent. Media and Publishing sector, on the other hand, recorded the biggest losses, down by 1.03 percent. Top ten market cap companies closed the day in the negative territory except Kingdom Holding and Saudi Electricity Co., which rose to 1.63 percent and 0.95 percent respectively.