DANGCEM drives Nigeria stock index up 0.38% amid sell-offs across sectors

Smattering from a week opening loss, the Nigerian equities market recorded modest gains Tuesday as uptick in Dangote Cement (DANGCEM) and buying interest in some large caps helped push benchmark index up 0.38 percent, despite sell-offs across sectors.

The day’s trading session was majorly characterised by sell-offs across sectors. However, buy interest in some large cap stocks more than offset the negative impact.

To this end, the NSE All Share Index (ASI) gained 38bps to settle at 42,148.40 points while YTD return inched higher to 10.2 percent.

Consequently, market capitalisation gained N57.5 billion to settle at N15.1 trillion. Gains in DANGCEM (+3.5%) helped keep the index in the positive region, without which the market would have lost 84bps.

Market activity level strengthened as volume and value traded surged 77.7 percent and 102.6 percent to 510.3 million units and N4.6 billion respectively.

Sector performance was largely bearish as all indices closed in the red, save for the industrial goods index, which rose 1.6 percent on the back of gains in DANGCEM (+3.5%).

The oil & gas index declined the most, down 1.3 percent following losses in TOTAL (-5.0%) and CONOIL (-9.7%).  Similarly, the banking index dipped 1.0 percent as bellwether banking stocks – ZENITH (-0.8%) and GUARANTY (-0.5%) trended southwards.

In the same vein, the consumer goods and insurance indices fell 0.1 percent and 0.4 percent consequent on price depreciation in INTBREW (-5.0%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-0.7%), WAPIC (-4.6%) and LINKASSURE (-4.2%).

Market breadth (advance/decline ratio), which measures investor sentiment stayed flat at 0.5x as 18 stocks advanced against 37 decliners.

Leading the gainers were PZ (+5.0%), CADBURY (+5.0%) and LIVESTOCK (+4.8%) while CONOIL (-9.7%), UNITY (-9.2%) and STERLING (-9.0%) were the worst performers.