Saudi market's upward climb continues

Riyadh: The Saudi market continued its upward trend, climbing past the 5,000pt barrier and achieving a 17 per cent increase in the last two weeks.

This rise is being supported by investors optimism regarding the performance of listed Saudi companies at the time that companies' dividends announcements 2008 are being released.

The petrochemical sector acted as the main driver for the market where its products prices were relatively stable during December, positively affecting the sector as a whole that led to an increase in the Tadawul's benchmark for the petrochemical industries by 17 per cent this week.

On the other hand the major increase were found in small cap stocks, which are usually are the main force behind investors' speculations and margin taking on the short run, specially in the food industry and insurance sectors.

This indicates investors' massive potential / desire for speculation, by tempting investors under the current stable condition of the market to invest in some of these companies before the dividends announcements, which will not reflect its current prices.

For example the percentage of accumulated losses for Saudi Fisheries Co. reached 40 per cent of it capital, however its stock price had the second biggest raise this week of 48 per cent.

TASI registered 5322.22 points on Wednesday January 7 closing up by 10.8 per cent from last week. Trading value reached 34.7 billion Saudi riyals, (Dh33.98 billion) up against last week's 19.8 billion riyals.

Alinma Bank dominated trading value at 15 per cent followed by SABIC at 11 per cent and Zain KSA at 5 per cent.

Stock prices of 122 companies were up, while 3 companies were down, one unchanged and one didn't trade. As for top 10 blue chips, the highest gains were in Banque Saudi Fransi and The Saudi British Bank.