Tourism sector stays in the limelight

Saudi Arabia’s benchmark stock index reflecting a 3-day fall during the week, closed at 7,667.07 points last week, trimming only 23.31 points or 0.30 percent for the entire week.
It performed within a range of 103 points, moving 54 points up and 49 points below the break-even level.
On year-to-date basis, the TASI has achieved 865.8 points or 12.73 percent growth.
The market capitalization of Saudi stock exchange reached to SR 1.53 trillion, decreasing by 0.59 percent from the previous week’s value.
Large Cap performed worst among market cap indices, turning down more than one percent in a week.
Seven out of Tadawul’s 15 sectors indices finished to the upside, reflecting an accumulation of 1,537 points.
Hotel & Tourism continued a splendid performance among sectoral indices, marking another solid weekly gain of 1,060 points or 8.66 percent to close at 13,311.37.
Agriculture and Real Estate sectors followed it, advancing 2.9 percent and 1.7 percent respectively.
On the other hand, Petrochemical Industries posted the largest losses, falling 2.1 percent to close the week at 6,069.29.
National Petrochemical Co. suffering worst (-6.77 percent) of all equities became the major decliner at Tadawul.
Most of heavyweights ended lower last week, with Saudi Arabia Fertilizers Co. (SAFCO) dipping by 5.71 percent, SABB 2.54 percent and Saudi Telecom Co. 2.2 percent.
On the positive side, Samba Financial Group showed the best performance among heavyweight stocks, advancing one and half percent.
Decliners outnumbered the advancers by a margin of 91 to 62 and the prices of 3 companies remained unchanged last week.
Al-Tayyar Travel Group topped the gainer chart at Tadawul, surging 11.76 percent and closing the week at SR 80.75.
Market activity remained roughly 10 percent greater than previous week’s level. More than 781.9 million shares worth SR21.4 billion changed hands on the Saudi stock market.
Furthermore, upside-downside volume ratio of 1.2:1 also remained positive.
Alinma Bank continued to dominate the trading activity, liquidating roughly 165 million shares and capturing 21 percent of the overall market volume.
The bank also pumped more liquidity into the market, contributing SR 2.4 billion and advancing 4.3 percent.
Most of the major benchmark indices at GCC stock markets ended the week in green, with Dubai Financial Market rose 4.4 percent.
The benchmark GulfBase GCC General Index closed the week higher at 4,512.8 points level, adding 38.9 points or 0.87 percent for the entire week.