Late rally sees Dangote Cement, GTB drive Nigeria’s major stock index up 0.88%

A late rally that saw two bellwether sticks clawing up some gains,  DANGCEM (+0.7%) and GUARANTY (+4.1%), lifted the benchmark index Monday, driving the All Share Index (ASI) 0.88 percent higher to 33,196.07 points.

This helped market capitalization rise by N105.4 billion to reach  N12.1 trillion while year-to-date loss improved to -13.2 percent. Activity level was however mixed as volume traded fell by 46.3 percent to 150.0 million units while value traded rose 46.7 percent to N2.9 billion, indicating investors’ interest in bellwethers.

ZENITH (28.4m units), GUARANTY (28.3m units) and FCMB (15.4m units) were the top traded stocks by volume while GUARANTY (N1.1bn), ZENITH (N0.7bn) and DANGCEM (N0.5bn) led by value.

Across sectors, performance was equally bearish as 3 of 5 indices closed in the red. The insurance index lost the most, down 0.4 percent following weaker earnings published by key constituent– AIICO (-8.7%) and profit taking in CUSTODIAN (-8.3%).

 Similarly, losses in OANDO (-2.8%), ETERNA (-2.4%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-0.6%) and FLOURMILL (-1.6%) dragged the oil & gas and consumer goods indices 0.3 percent and 0.2 percent lower respectively. On the flip side, the banking and industrial goods indices gained, up 2.0 percent and 0.4 percent respectively following buying interest in GUARANTY (+4.1%), ZENITH (+1.9%) and DANGCEM (+0.7%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened, albeit still soft to 0.9x from 0.6x recorded on Friday consequent on 16 stocks appreciating relative to 17 declining. The best performing stocks were LASACO (+6.7%), STANBIC (+6.5%) and WAPIC (+4.8%) while UNITY (-10.0%), DIAMOND (-9.7%) and ROYALEX (-9.1) led laggards.

Analysts at Afrinvest noted that severe sell pressures outside banking bellwether stocks, were observed in Monday’s trading session; thus prompting an expectation of a decline in market performance in the subsequent sessions.