Investors rally Nigerian bellwethers, drive NSE ASI 0.95% northward
Adesola Afolabi was a businessamlive reporter and Head of Financial desk.
Renewed buying interest in bellwethers such as DANGCEM (+2.5%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+3.1%), UNILEVER (+5.6%) and ZENITH (+1.5%) drove a positive performance at the Nigerian Stock Exchange Tuesday.
As a result, the benchmark index inched 0.95 percent higher to 32,722.18, thereby reducing year-to-date loss to -14.4 percent while market capitalization increased by N112 billion to N11.9 trillion.
Activity level also improved as volume and value traded surged 624.3 percent and 452.8 percent to 662.0 million units and N5.3 billion respectively due to trades in large cap stocks.
GUARANTY (41.8m units), FIDELITY (20.3m units) and ZENITH (17.3m units) were the top traded stocks by volume while SEPLAT (N2.2bn), GUARANTY (N1.5bn) and DANGCEM (N0.4bn) led by value.
Performance across sectors was positive as 3 of 5 indices closed northwards.
The consumer goods index gained the most, up 1.2 percent following buying interest in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+3.1%) and UNILEVER (+5.6%).
Similarly, price appreciation in DANGCEM (+2.5%), ZENITH (+1.6%), UBA (+0.6%) and UBN (+1.0%) drove the industrial goods and banking indices 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent higher respectively.
On the flip side, the oil & gas and insurance indices declined, shedding 1.3 percent and 0.5 percent respectively due to sell pressures in SEPLAT (-1.6%), AIICO (-5.2%) and HMARKINS (-0.3%).
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) weakened to 0.7x from 0.9x recorded the previous day as 16 stocks appreciated in value relative to 23 that declined.
The top performers were UAC-PROP (+9.9%), CUTIX (+9.7%) and UNILEVER (+5.6%) while BETAGLASS (-10.0%), JBERGER (-9.8%) and NIGERINS (-9.1%) were the worst performers for the day.
Analysts at Afrinvest anticipate sustained bargain hunting in bellwethers till midweek as investors take advantage of cheap entry prices.