Charles Abuede
The Nigerian equities market will open this morning Friday, the last day of the trading week, smarting from a positive close on Thursday that was propelled by price appreciation in the stocks of Nigerian Breweries (+10.0%), Dangote Cement (+0.9%) and Guaranty Trust Bank (+2.0%) which buoyed positive return in the All-Share Index as it climbed 79 basis points to 25,987.14 points.
It was also observed that investors continued to buy low-priced stocks in the market. But the positive performance caused market capitalisation to rise by N106.7 billion to N13.6 trillion while year to date (YTD) and month to date (MTD) return improved to -3.2 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively.
On the other hand, market activity level declined as volume and value traded dipped 13.3 per cent and 38.3 per cent respectively to 359.3 million units and N3.9 billion. The most traded stocks by volume were Sterling Bank (71.9 million units), GTB (51.7 million units) and Zenith (44.5 million units) while GTB (N1.3 billion), Zenith Bank (N759.1 million) and Flour Mill (N588.3 million) led by value.
Bullish sector performanceÂ
Similarly, the bulls surmounted the bears as performance across the sectors was bullish with four out of six indices appreciating. The consumer goods index led the gainers, up 2.1 per cent following price accretion in Nigerian Breweries (+10.0%) and Dangote Sugar (+2.9%). The banking and industrial goods indices advanced 1.6 per cent and 0.9 per cent respectively due to buying interest in GTB (+2.0%), Access Bank (+4.0%) and Wapco (+6.8%).
Also, gains in MTN (+0.1%) drove the AFR-ICT index four basis points higher. Conversely, the insurance and oil & gas indices lowered 0.7 per cent and 0.2 per cent respectively due to losses in Wapic Insurance (-7.7%) and ARDOVA (-9.7%).
Investor sentiment strengthens
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 3.6x from the 1.5x recorded previously as 25 stocks gained against the seven that lost. Nigerian Breweries (+10.0%), Union DAC (+8.0%) and ROYAL Express (+7.4%) were top gainers while ARDOVA (-9.6%), DAAR Communications (-9.1%) and Red Star Express (-7.7%) were the laggards.
The NSE 30
The NSE 30 Index increased by 0.95 per cent to close at 1,105.44 points as against 1,095.08 points it closed the previous day. Market turnover closed with a traded volume of 289.88 million units. Nigerian Breweries and Lafarge Africa were the key gainers, while Unilever was the only losers.
