Charles Abuede
Investors took a profit of N105.8 billion in Tuesday’s equities market trading on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) as the bulls continued to maintain the momentum they opened the market with this week, following a bullish close last week.
The local bourse inched up by 0.70 per cent in the day’s session as measured by the NSE All-Share Index, which closed at 28,980.29 due to the dictated performance spurred by companies’ earnings results.
The market extended the previous day’s gain as a result of buying interest in Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), which was up 2.0 per cent; BUA Cement, up 1.2 per cent; and Union Bank of Nigeria (UBN), up by 8.3 per cent.
The resultant gain of 70 basis points by the index offered investors the chance to gain N105.8 billion with the market capitalisation increasing to N15.1 trillion and market year to date (YTD) return improving to 8.0 per cent.
However, the most traded stocks by volume were FBN Holdings (81.8 million units), Access Bank (50.7 million units) and Fidelity Bank (35.2 million units) while FBN Holdings (N505.5 million), Zenith Bank (N402.0 million) and Access Bank (N391.2 million) led by value.
Bullish sector performance
Market performance across sectors was bullish as all the indices closed northward. The insurance and banking indices advanced 2.7 per cent and 2.2 per cent respectively due to buying interest in Linkage Assurance (+10.0%), Wapic Plc (+2.7%), GTB (+2.0%) and UBN (+8.3%).
Similarly, consumer goods and oil & gas indices rose 0.9 per cent and 0.8 per cent respectively, following price appreciation in Flour Mills Plc (+9.5%), Guinness Nigeria Plc (+5.6%), OANDO (+6.1%) and CONOIL (+9.8%).
Price upticks in BUA Cement (+1.2%) and E-Tranzact (+7.7%) drove the industrial goods and AFR-ICT indices higher by 0.5 per cent and 3 basis points respectively.
Investor sentiment strengthens
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) surged to 23.0x from the 1.8x recorded previously as 46 stocks gained against the two that declined. Linkage Assurance (+10.0%), CONOIL (+9.8%) and Northern Nigeria Flour Mills (+9.8%) were top gainers while Wema Bank (-1.7%) and NEM Insurance (-1.5%) were the underperformers.
The NSE 30
The NSE 30 index increased by 0.74 per cent to close at 1,243.37 points as against 1,234.26 points on the previous day. Market turnover closed with a traded volume of 285.01 million units. Flour Mills and UBN were the key gainers, while there were no losers.
