Heavy trading in consumer goods blue chip companies propelled a bullish performance at the equities’ segment of the Nigerian Stock Exchange Monday, with the All Share Index (ASI) closing 0.51 percent higher at 32,201.9 points.
Buy interests in Nigerian Breweries and Nestle Nigeria which increased 2.7 and 1.4 percent, respectively contributed to the positive performance. The heavy transactions in the consumer goods sector led to a rise in the market capitalisation by N59.9 billion, bringing total market capitalisation to N11.8 trillion while year-to-date loss improved to – 15.7 percent.
Sectoral analysis of the day’s trading activities revealed the consumer goods index advanced the most, up 1.4 percent following bargain hunting in Nigerian Breweries, Nestle and Flourmills, while the insurance and banking indices trailed, appreciating by 0.8 percent and 0.4 percent respectively as a result of gains in Continental Re-insurance, Prestige Assurance, FBN Holdings and ETI.
These stocks appreciated 6.4, 8.9, 2.0 and 1.6 percent respectively.
On the other hand the oil & gas index fell by 0.7 percent on the back of sell offs in Forte Oil which fell 7.8 percent while the industrial goods index closed flat despite a 3.2 percent gain in FirstAluminium.
Activity level weakened as volume and value traded shed 9.8 percent and 35.6 percent to 148.1 million units and N1.8 billion respectively.
The top traded stocks by volume were Oando (30.3m units), Diamond (16.4m units) and UBA (12.9m units) while Nestle (N408.8m), GTB (N338.6bn) and Oando (N154.2bn) were the top traded stocks by value.
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) significantly improved to 5.2x from 0.7x recorded last Friday as 26 stocks appreciated against 5 decliners.
Glaxosmithkline, UAC Property and Nigeria Police Force Microfinance Bank with a gain of 10, 9.7 and 9.6 percent respectively, emerged the best performing stocks while the worst performing stocks were UnionDAC (-8.0%), Mutual Benefit (-8.0%) and Forte Oil (-8.0%).
