Stock investors see respite with N34bn gain
Investors trading on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) started the week on a positive note, with the market snapping four-day consecutive days of decline.
This came as the equities index advanced by 0.17 per cent to 39,396.57 basis points, with aggregate equities market cap gaining N34 billion to close higher at N20.613 trillion.
The performance was buoyed by investors’ interests in WAPCO (+7.7 per cent) and some tier 1 banking stocks, including FBNH (+2.8 per cent) and ACCESS (+2.6 per cent).
Consequently, the Month-to-Date (MtD) and Year-to-Date (YtD) losses moderated to -1.0 per cent and -2.2 per cent respectively.
However, the total volume traded declined by 49.4 per cent to 297.27 million units, valued at N3.15 billion, and exchanged in 4,655 deals. ZENITHBANK was the most traded stock by volume and value at 66.50 million share units and N1.67 billion, respectively.
Performance across sectors was broadly positive, following gains across the Insurance (+1.3%), Oil & Gas (+1.0%) and Industrial Goods (+0.5%) indices. The Consumer Goods (-0.1%) index was the lone loser while the Banking index closed flat.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment turned positive (1.7x), as 24 tickers gained, relative to 14 losers.
LINKASSURE (+10.0 per cent) and ARDOVA (+10.0 per cent) recorded the largest gains of the day, while MEYER (-10.0 per) and LIVESTOCK (-9.9 per cent) topped the losers’ list.
