Nigerian stocks keep bull run going for third day with All-Share Index recording 0.69% gain  

Nigerian stocks extended the bullish Monday opening on Tuesday to make three days of a bull run that began Friday as the All Share Index advanced 0.69 percent to settle at 33,191.45 points on account of buy interests in market bellwethers – DANGCEM (+2.1%), NESTLE (+2.2%) and FBNH (+4.3%).

Similarly, market capitalisation rose by N83.5 billion to N12.1 trillion, while year-to-date loss moderated to -13.0 percent.

However, activity level weakened as average volume and value traded dipped 39.3 percent and 110.6 percent to 185.1 million units and N2.4 billion respectively.

The top traded stocks by volume were FCMB (27.6 million units), TRANSCORP (24.9 million units) and GUARANTY (15.2 million units) while GUARANTY (N553.9 million), ZENITH (N318.8 million) and NESTLE (N299.7 million) led the top traded stocks by value.

Performance across sectors was largely bullish as 3 of 5 major indices trended upwards. The industrial goods and consumer goods indices advanced the most, up 0.9 percent and 0.2 percent respectively on the back of gains in DANGCEM (+2.1%), NESTLE (+2.2%) and DANGFLOUR (+2.7%) while the oil & gas index rose by 0.1% as a result of buy interests in OANDO (+0.9%).

On the flip side, the insurance index declined by 0.7%, following losses in NIGERINS (-7.1%) and NEM (-4.0%) while the banking index shed 0.6 percent on account of sell-offs in ETI (-5.0%) and UBA (-1.2%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) however weakened to 0.8x from 1.1x recorded in the previous trading session as 14 stocks appreciated against 18 decliners.

TRANSCORP (+9.6%), HONEYFLOUR (+4.4%) and FBNH (+4.3%) were the best performing stocks while FIRSTALU (-9.1%), PZ (-7.7%) and MCNICHOLS (-7.4%) led laggards.

On the back of the third quarter corporate earnings releases, Afrinvest analysts anticipate a bullish run in the equities market in the near term.