By Charles Abuede
The Nigerian bourse was fired up on all cylinders on Thursday and it helped the market to sustain its bullish momentum in the face of falling oil prices across the market spectrum; with institutional investors increasing their capital inflows to Nigerian stocks on the prevailing low returns seen in the debt market.
The domestic equities market maintained an uptrend as the benchmark index appreciated 210 basis points to close at 36,239.62 points due to gains in Airtel Africa (+10.0%), Dangote Cement (+2.6%) and Zenith Bank (+2.7%). As a result the market’s year-to-date return improved to 35 per cent and market capitalisation increased by N390.2 billion to hit N18.94 trillion from N18.55 trillion the previous day. Read Also:
Also, market activity level was mixed as volume traded declined 47.1 per cent to 343.6 million units while value traded surged 90.2 per cent to N4.3 billion. The most traded stocks by volume were FBN Holdings (99.4 million units), United Bank for Africa (22.3 million units) and Access Bank (20.9 million units), while Dangote Cement (N1.3 billion), FBN Holdings (N700.4 million) and Zenith Bank (N388.7 million) led by value.
Performance across sectors of the market was bullish as all indices closed in the green with the AFR-ICT index leading the chart with a 5.7 per cent gain, due to buying interest in Airtel Africa (+10.0%). Trailing, the insurance and industrial goods indices rose 2.4 per cent and 1.3 per cent respectively, following price appreciation in AXA Mansard (+9.1%), AIICO Insurance (+1.7%), and Dangote Cement (+2.6%).
In the same vein, the banking and oil & gas indices advanced, up 1.1 per cent and 0.6 per cent respectively as a result of price uptick in Zenith Bank (+2.75%), Union Bank (+3.8%), Forte Oil (+10.0%) and OANDO (+2.1%). The consumer goods index gained 23 basis points as Unilever (+9.5%) and Dangote Sugar (+0.3%) ticked higher.
Meanwhile, the sentiment of investors as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) decreased to 1.7x from the 1.9x recorded in the previous session as 29 stocks gained against the 17 that declined. However, Airtel Africa (+10.0%), ARDOVA (Forte Oil) (+10.0%) and FTN Cocoa (+9.6%) led the gainers while Omatek (-9.1%), Wapic (-9.1%) and Champion (-9.0%) led the decliners.
The NSE 30
On the NSE 30, the index increased by 0.83 per cent to close at 1,470.61 points as against 1,458.51 points on Wednesday. Market turnover closed with a traded volume of […]
