As is so typical of the Saudi stock market, the agriculture sector was the first to benefit from an improvement in sentiment. The CCFI Agriculture Index increased by 2.2% during the week with reasonable volumes. This performance was followed by the electricity sector, which registered an increase of 1%. The cement and industrial sectors showed marginal improvements at 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively. The banking and services sectors, however, declined by 0.4% and 0.2%, respectively. After a long time, the number of gainers was higher than the number of losers; 31 shares increased in price, 23 declined and 14 showed no change.
Trading volume showed no improvement and was reduced further by 4.7%. An even higher decline, 26.5%, was observed in the total value traded. Like always, services sector was the volume leader followed by the industrial sector and the electricity sector. Among the companies, Arriyadh Development Company was the volume leader at 10.1 million shares representing 27.1% of market volume and 19.8% of total value traded. This was followed by Al Mawashi Al Mukairish United Company with a trading volume of 4.9 million shares representing 13.1% of market volume and 3.7% of value traded. The top 5 stocks constituted 63.2% of the market volume and 43.2% of the market turnover.
National Gypsum Company continued to be the top performer for the second consecutive week. Its spectacular rise of 15.4% was accompanied by a trading volume of 0.21 million shares. Year-to-date, the stock is up 32.37%. The second highest gainer was Saudi Industrial Exports Company with a rise of 9.6% during the week. Giving in to gravity was Saudi Chemical Company being the major loser with a decline of 13.5%. Needless to say that this was imminent given its meteoric rise in the past weeks. However, year-to-date, the stock is still up by an unbelievable 360%. The second largest decline, 7.9%, was in the price of Saudi Industrial Services Company. The total market capitalization increased by 0.05% to SR 293.3 billion.