By Charles Abuede
Persistent buying sentiment aided the positive performance witnessed in Thursday’s session at the Nigerian Stock Exchange, particularly in the oil & gas and banking sectors. At the close of trading, the domestic equities market sustained the previous day’s gain, rising 31 basis points to settle at 40,490.85 points. The positive performance was driven by buying interest in Seplat Petroleum (+10.0%), Dangote Sugar (3.83%), Nigerian Breweries (+3.6%) and GTBank (+1.5%). Read Also:
As a result, the market’s year-to-date return improved to 0.8 per cent, while market capitalisation advanced by N65.7 billion to settle at N21.2 trillion.
Similarly, the level of trading activity surged as volume and value traded advanced 755.0 per cent and 243.8 per cent to 2.1 billion units and N7.5 billion respectively. The most traded stocks by volume were United Bank for Africa – UBA – (26.5 million units), Dangote Sugar (21.5 million units) and Fidelity Bank (15.7 million units), while Dangote Sugar (N397.8 million), Zenith Bank (N327.3 million) and GTBank (N315.1 million) topped by value.
Mixed sector performance
Performance across sectors was bullish as 3 of 6 indices gained, except the AFR-ICT and industrial goods indices, which closed flat. The oil & gas index led gainers, up 5.7 per cent due to buying interest in Seplat Petroleum (+10.0%) and ARDOVA Plc (+9.9%). Similarly, the consumer goods and banking indices rose 0.8 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively, buoyed by price appreciation in Nigerian Breweries (+3.6%), Dangote Sugar (+3.8%), GTBank (+1.5%) and Zenith Bank (+0.8%). Conversely, losses in AXA Mansard (-3.2%) and Sovereign Insurance (-9.1%) dragged the insurance index marginally lower by 2 basis points.
Investor sentiment strengthens
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 1.4x from the 0.4x recorded previously as 22 stocks advanced against 16 decliners. Livestock (+10.0%), Seplat Petroleum (+10.0%) and FTN Cocoa (+10.0%) were the best-performing tickers while Sovereign Insurance (-9.1%), Eterna Plc (-8.2%) and DEAP Capital (-8.0%) were the biggest losers.
NSE 30
The NSE 30 Index increased by 0.39 per cent to close at 1,657.11 points as against 1,650.72 points recorded on the previous day. Market turnover closed with a traded volume of 145.34 million units. Seplat and Dangote Sugar were the key gainers, while Unilever and Sterling were the key losers.
Foreign Exchange Market The naira was sticky at N470 against the dollar in the unofficial street FX market, even as the I&E window […]