Investors at the equities segment of the Nigerian Stock Exchange kick-started the week searching for bargains in fundamentally sound stocks.
Buying interest in bellwether stocks such as Nigerian Breweries (+5.3%), Access Bank (+1.6%) and Guaranty Trust Bank (+0.5%) improved the All Share Index by 0.4 percent to 30,745.05 points.
Market capitalisation thus rose by N40.5 billion to N11.5 trillion while year-to-date loss improved slightly to -2.2 percent.
Bargain hunting activities is expected to continue till mid-week as investors position in previous decliners, said equities market analyst at Afrinvest.
The day’s activity chart showed volume and value traded declined 32.3 percent and 76.5 percent to 183.2 million units and N1.0 billion respectively.
The top traded stocks by value were Zenith (N249.8m), Guaranty (N104.8m) and Dangote Cement (N84.2m) while Fidelity (36.2m units) Transcorp (34.3m units) and Diamond Bank (29.5 units) led the top traded stocks by volume.
On sectoral performance, the oil & gas index emerged the lone loser with a 1.1 percent decline due to losses in Forte Oil (-8.5%) and Oando (-2.0%).
 Bargain hunting in Nigerian Breweries (+5.3%) Dangote Flour (+3.5%), Custodian and Allied Insurance (+4.6%) and NEM (+2.5%) drove the positive performance of the consumer goods and insurance indices which were up 1.1 percent and 0.7 percent respectively.
Similarly, the banking index inched 0.2 percent higher due to gains in Access Bank (+1.6%) and Guaranty Trust Bank (+0.5%).
The industrial goods index closed on a flat note, with a bullish bias, up 0.02% on the back of price appreciation in Cutix (+5.6%).
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 0.9x from 0.4x recorded last week as 17 stocks advanced against 20 decliners.
 The top performing stocks were Red Star Express (+10.0%), Ikeja Hotel (+10.0%) and MCNICHOLS (+8.3%) while the laggards were led by Champion y (-10.0%), Academy Press (-8.9%) and Unity Bank (-8.9%).
