Nigerian stocks bounce back as bargain hunting edges NSEASI up 0.05%

The Nigerian equities market bounced back from a slip in the previous session to record marginal 0.05 percent gain in the benchmark index, the NSEASI, to settle at 40,777.67, while YTD return remained unchanged at 6.6 percent.

Market capitalization gained N49.5 billion to advance to N14.8 trillion.

The day’s bullish performance was largely due to buying an interest in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+1.8%), UNILEVER (+3.6%) and OANDO (+5.2%). Similarly, activity level strengthened as volume and value traded increased 8.0 percent and 36.0 percent to 378.2 million units and N6.3 billion respectively.

The top traded stocks by volume were GUARANTY (63.5m), DIAMOND (59.7m) and FBNH (42.8m) while GUARANTY (N2.8bn), FBNH (N515.1m) and FLOURMILL (N474.7m) topped the chart by value.

Overall sector performance was bearish as all indices under our watch closed in the red save the Consumer Goods index, which trended northwards. The insurance index led laggards down 0.5 percent, following losses in CONTINSURE (-4.0%).

The industrial goods and banking indices trailed closely, depreciating 0.4 percent and 0.3 percent on account of sell-offs in WAPCO (-0.9%) and UBA (-1.7%) respectively while the oil & gas index shed 0.2 percent as a result of losses in ETERNA (-1.5%), 11PLC (-1.2%) and FORTE (-0.3%).

On the positive side, the consumer goods index appreciated 0.8 percent on the back of bargain hunting in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+1.8%) and UNILEVER (+3.6%).

However, investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) worsened to 0.5x from 1.1x recorded in the preceding session as 14 stocks advanced against 26 that declined.

The top performing stocks were OANDO (+5.2%), OKOMUOIL (+5.0%) and CILEASING (+4.7%) while NPFMCRFBK (-8.9%), JAIZBANK (-8.0%) and TRANSCORP (-5.0%) were the worst performing stocks.