The Saudi stock market concluded the first week’s trading of H2 2018 with limited decline, following profit gaining by shares of leading companies.
Traders in the Saudi stock market expect more announcements of listed companies’ fiscal results in Q2 2018. While some other reports showed expected growth in bank profits, petrochemical companies and some cement and telecommunication firms.
Saudi shares market index concluded H1 of 2018 trading with 15 percent gains, at a time when foreign investors increased their possession in local market trading to around 5 percent.
According to data issued by Tadawul, the foreign investor possession value reached 4.99 percent of the total market value of listed shares in June, with a rise of 0.08 percent compared to the previous month.
In this regard, the Saudi shares market index concluded the last week’s trading with a decline of 1.6 percent, 136 points, closing at 8,178 points compared to the past week’s closure at 8,314 points.
Last week’s total trading value reached remarkable rise in which it totaled SAR16.64 (USD4.4 billion) compared to around SAR14.67 billion (USD3.9 billion) during the week before, rising 13.4 percent.
These developments come at a time when the Saudi economy, the biggest in the Middle East, achieved in the first quarter of the current year a positive growth of 1.2 percent, a sign on the effectiveness of economic reforms aimed at diversifying the economy to have less dependency on oil.
According to the General Authority for Statistics, production in the non-oil domestic sector achieved more positive growth rates during the first quarter of the current year (1.6 percent), while the growth rate for the public non-oil sector was at 2.7 percent during the same period.
The authority data showed that the Saudi GDP rose 1.2 percent end of Q1 2018, in which its value in fixed price reached SAR647.8 billion (USD172.7 billion) compared to SAR640.4 billion (USD170.7 billion) during the same period in 2017.
