Penny stocks join forces to displace bears as index ups 0.18%
Positive trading returned to the domestic equities market on Wednesday as penny stocks led a charge to displace the bears in an aggressive offensive strongly backed by bargain buying in the shares of Dangote Cement which advanced by 1.4 per cent.
Consequently, the market All-share Index (ASI) advanced by 0.18 per cent to close at 38,482.52 basis points, while the valuation of all equities investments in the country gained N35 billion to close at N20.058 trillion.
Consequently, the Month-to-Date (MtD) return turned positive to +0.1 per cent, while the Year-to-Date (YtD) loss moderated to -4.4 per cent.
However, the bullish close of the day came amidst depressed activity level as turnover closed lower following 42.91 per cent and 49.43 per cent in traded volume and value of trade respectively.
Trading report also showed contrasting experience in terms of market sentiment, measured by breadth that saw emergence of 19 loser against 15 gaining stocks.
Analysing by sectors, the Insurance (+0.8 per cent) and Industrial Goods (+0.5 per cent) indices recorded gains while the Consumer Goods (-0.2 per cent) and Oil & Gas (-0.1 per cent) indices declined. The Banking index closed flat.
The Penny stocks that topped gaining charts are UPL gaining 9.38 per cent to close at N1.40 per share, followed by Regalins with 8.16 per cent gain to close at N0.53 per share.
Other stocks that spurred the gain of the day include VeritasKap, CHIPLC and RoyalEx that advanced by 5 per cent, 4.17 per cent and 3.90 per cent to close at N0.21, N0.75 and N0.80 per share respectively.
On the contrary, other decliners were led by CWG that saw 9.66 per cent share price loss to close at N1.87 per share. Ikeja Hotels followed suit with 9.09 per cent decline to close at N1 per share while NASCON, John Holt and Linkassure shed 8.78 per cent, 8.62 per cent and 8.33 per cent to close at N13.50, N0.53 and N0.55 per share respectively.
At the close of the midweek session, collectively, investors traded 156.91 million shares worth N1.33 billion in 3,273 transactions relative to 274.85 million shares valued at N2.63 billion that exchanged hands in 4,159 trades in the previous session.
