Bulls afloat amid bargain hunting in major Nigerian stocks as investors gain N7.1bn

Charles Abuede

Given the bearish market performance last week, the Nigerian market extended its bullish stance marginally into the new week as bargain hunting continued in major industrial goods and banking stocks to give investors N7.1 billion profits on Monday.

Similarly, the bulls stayed afloat at the end of the day’s trading session as more room for profit-taking offered itself to investors to take a position in fundamentally sound stocks.

The local bourse opened the week on a positive note as the All-Share Index rose five basis points (bps) to settle at 25,605.59 points due to bargain hunting in DANGCEM (+0.8%), WAPCO (+2.0%) and GUARANTY (+0.4%). Consequently, market capitalisation rose to N13.4 trillion as investors gained N7.1 billion, a 5bps incline pegging negative year to date (YTD) return at 4.6 per cent.

Similarly, market activity level inched up as volume and value traded increased 20.8 per cent and 45.7 per cent respectively to 257 million units and N3.32 billion as against N213 million and N2.28 billion recorded at the close of Friday’s session. The most traded stocks by volume were CUSTODIAN (49.3m units), WAPCO (29.6m units) and GUARANTY (23.6m units) while GUARANTY (N739.2m), STANBIC (N580.8m) and MTNN (N486.0m) led by value.

Mixed sector performance 

There was a mixed performance across sectors in the market, albeit negatively skewed as 3 of the 6 indices covered declined. The Consumer Goods and Oil & Gas indices led laggards, down 50bps and 8bps respectively following sell pressures in INTBREW (-8.6%), NASCON (-0.5%) and OANDO (-0.8%). Similarly, the Insurance index lost 7bps owing to price depreciation in CORNERSTONE (-4.6%).

On the other hand, the Industrial Goods and Banking indices were the best performing indicators, up 51bps and 15bps respectively due to bargain hunting in DANGCEM (+0.8%), WAPCO (+2.0%), GUARANTY (+0.4%) and FBNH (+1.0%). Finally, the AFRI-ICT index closed flat.

Investor sentiment remained flat

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) was unchanged at 1.1x as 17 stocks gained against the 16 that lost. The top gainers were NEIMETH (+9.6%), ROYALEX (+7.1%) and CHIPLC (+6.9%) while INTBREW (-8.6%), UAC-PROP (-8.4%) and FCMB (-7.7%) lost the most.