The shares of Saudi Aramco started influencing the performance of the Saudi stock market index on Wednesday, with trades that are most active in terms of both value and quantity.
This comes although the oil giant’s shares fell almost 3 percent on Wednesday as a natural result of investors pocketing profits on the day it was included in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.
Aramco’s share managed - despite the profit-taking operations - to consolidate its valuation, closing at 36.6 riyals ($9.76) on Wednesday. The shares closed Tuesday trading at 37.75 riyals ($10), down 0.25 riyals or 0.66 percent on the day, but the stock remains 18 percent higher than the IPO price of 32 riyals.
The Saudi stock market index ended its trading on Wednesday, with an increase of 0.7 percent, to close at 8253 points, 56 points higher, continuing its rise for the fourth session, and recording the highest closing in about 4 months, amid trades totaling about 6.6 billion riyals ($1.76 billion).
With the closure of trading on Wednesday, the share of SABIC - one of the largest petrochemical companies in the world - rose by more than one percent, to end its trading at 91.5 riyals ($24.4). This was seen as a reaction to the company’s board of directors recommendation to distribute cash dividends to shareholders by 2.2 riyals for the second half of 2019.
Earlier this month, Tadawul updated its index methodology to develop and manage its equity indices in a more balanced way.
The measures include a 15 percent threshold to reduce the dominance of larger companies on the index performance so that weights of all index constituents remain under a set capping threshold, Tadawul announced in a statement.
The exchange is also applying a new rule for “Fast Entry”, in which shares of significantly large IPOs are included in the Tadawul All Share Index at the close of their fifth trading day.
