- Market posts highest daily return since April, 2015
- Bargain hunting, liquidity as the driving forces
- MTNN, Dangcem, others claim lion shares
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The equities market in Nigeria is growing stronger by the day following 4.9 per cent improvement it recorded on Tuesday, as prices rose on liquidity and high expectations of Q3 earnings.
Consequently, bargain buying of large cap stocks continued on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) during the session, as investors continued to seek real returns, amidst abysmal fixed income yields.
Thus, investors’ interest in DANGCEM led to 9.9 per cent gain, and interest in the shares of MTN Nigeria yielded 5.7 per cent uptick.
This, coupled with other stocks that closed in green, drove the benchmark index higher by 4.9 per cent to 28,909.37 basis points after adding 1,354.88 points.
According to market players, this is the largest daily gain in the benchmark index since April 1, 2015. Consequently, Month-to-Date (MtD) gain and Year-to-Date (YtD) gain increased to 7.7 per cent respectively.
Sectoral performance was positive. The banking index recorded the highest northward movement of 7.5 per cent, followed by the industrial goods with 5.6 per cent, consumer goods with 3 per cent, oil & gas with 1.2 per cent and insurance 0.3 per cent.
Trading statistics for the session shows that on the gainers’ list, Dangcem led with N14.20 gain to close at 158.20 per share.
MTN Nigeria trailed with N7.70 to close at N142.70 per share. PRESCO gained N5.50 to close at N60.50 while Nigerian Breweries and Stanbic advanced by N3.50 and N2 to close at N52.30 and N42.50 per share respectively.
On the flip side, the shares of Berger recorded the steepest price fall of N0.40 to close the session at N6.10 per share. NPFMCRFBK followed with N0.12 loss and NEIMETH occupied the third spot on the chart as it shed N0.10 to close at N1.85 per share.
REDSTAREX and WAPIC completed the list of top five decliners by shedding 0.05 and N0.03 to close at N3.25 per share and N0.36 per share respectively.
Again, ZENITHBANK held on to its position as investors’ favourite. Investors staked a whooping sum of N2.772 billion to exchange 135.699 million shares of the company, representing highest volume and value.
On the turnover value chart, ZENITHBANK is followed by GUARANTY that traded 40.064 million share units valued at N1.224 billion. UBA traded 112.888 million shares valued at N768.183 million.
With ZENITHBANK and UBA as first and second most traded in terms of volume, FBNH occupied the third space with 83.91 million shares worth N544.408 million.
At the close of the session, investors have traded 749.468 million shares valued at n9.495 billion in 8,075 deals in contrast with 603.946 million shares worth N7.425 billion that exchanged hands in 5,984 transactions in the previous session.
