Nigerian bourse bounces back on interest in bellwether stocks as index gains 0.44%

Buy interests in on the Nigerian Stock Exchange led to a reversal of losses suffered on Wednesday as the market’s index recorded a gain of 0.44 percent. The bellwether stocks which helped the market gain on Thursday included NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+5.0%), DANGCEM (+0.3%) and NESTLE (+0.7%).

The outcome was also a rise in market capitalisation by N51.6 billion to N11.9 trillion with year-to-date loss improving to –14.9 percent.

However, activity level was mixed as volume traded shed 8.2 percent to 349.3 million units while value traded rose 57.3 percent to N3.7 billion.

The top traded stocks by volume were FCMB (180.3 million units), ZENITH (24.5 million units) and GUARANTY (23.8 million units) while DANGCEM (N939.6 million), GUARANTY (N869.9 billion) and ZENITH (N589.0 billion) were the top traded stocks by value.

Performance across sectors was largely bullish as 3 of 5 indices trended northwards.

The consumer goods index advanced the most, up 1.6 percent, following bargain hunting in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+5.0%), NESTLE (+0.7%) and UNILEVER (+1.1%) while the oil & gas and insurance indices trailed, appreciating by 0.7 percent and 0.2 percent respectively as a result of gains in TOTAL (+8.2%), LASACO (+7.1%) and LAWUNION (+3.4%).

On the flip side, the industrial goods and banking indices fell by 0.7 percent and 0.3 percent respectively on the back of sell-offs in WAPCO (-0.5%), ZENITH (-0.8%) and UBN (-2.0%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) weakened to 1.0x from 1.1x recorded yesterday as 19 stocks appreciated against 19 decliners.

JAIZBNK (+10.0%), ROYALEX (+10.0%) and TOTAL (+8.2%) were the best performing stocks while the worst performing stocks were BETAGLAS (-10.0%%), AGLEVENT (-10.0%) and CUTIX (-9.8%).