The local bourse kicked off the first trading session of the year on a positive note, following bargain hunting on BUACEMENT (+7.3%) stock, which lifted the market cap significantly.
Thus, the All-Share Index (ASI) advanced by 0.73 per cent to 43,026.23 points. Accordingly, the Year-to-Date return printed 0.73 per cent respectively.
The percentage increase in the benchmark index which tracks share price movements at the market yielded profit for investors as the aggregate stock valuation rose by N887 billion to settle at N23.184 trillion from N22.297 trillion it closed 2021.
Meanwhile, the gain was recorded amidst suppressed turnover as volume moved down by -51.81 per cent as against +24.89 percent uptick recorded in the previous session.
Specifically, investors traded 216.65 million units of shares valued at N1.52 billion, and exchanged in 4,080 deals.
Trading statistics obtained from the NGX website shows that CHAMS topped the chart as most traded stock by volume at 29.87 million units, followed by WemaBank with 17.111 million shares.
While ZENITHBANK occupied the third position in terms of traded volume with 11.035 million shares, it led value chart with N278.219 million transactions by investors.
Nigerian Breweries follows with N232.899 million and GTCO with N212.452 million trade values at the end of the session to claim second and third positions respectively.
Analysing by sectors, the Consumer Goods (-0.9 per cent), Oil & Gas (-0.5 per cent) and Insurance (-0.4 per cent) indices declined while the Industrial Goods (+3.0 per cent) and Banking (+0.4 per cent) indices posted gains.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative (0.7x) as 25 tickers lost relative to 17 gainers.
ARDOVA (-10.0 per cent) and VITAFOAM (-10.0 per cent) closed limit up and topped the losers’ list while ACADEMY (+10.0 per cent) and WEMABANK (+9.7 per cent) recorded the most significant gains of the day.
