By Charles Abuede
Despite the lull witnessed at the start of the trading session midweek, the bulls picked up momentum favouring stocks in the banking and consumer goods space as the market gained 0.17 per cent on Wednesday. Read Also:
On Tuesday the market had witnessed a loss, but it rebounded Wednesday with a positive performance with a gain of 17 basis points to settle at 40,465.15 points.
The positive performance was driven by appreciation in Zenith Bank (+2.0%), United Bank for Africa – UBA – (+2.4%) and International Breweries (+2.5%). As a result, market return improved to 0.5 per cent while market capitalisation advanced by N36.1 billion to settle at N21.2 trillion from N21.13 trillion on the previous day.
Also, trading activity level decreased as volume and value traded fell 46.4 per cent and 57.3 per cent to 249.5 million units and N2.2 billion respectively. The most traded stocks by volume were Access Bank (21.9 million units), AXA Mansard (13.3 million units) and UBA (13.2 million units) while GTBank (N342.0 million), Zenith Bank (N310.4 million) and Stanbic IBTC (N306.2 million) topped by value.
Bullish sector performance
The market performance across sectors was bullish as 4 of 6 indices gained save the AFR-ICT and industrial goods indices which closed flat. The insurance and oil & gas indices topped the gainers, rising 3.0 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively due to buying interest in AXA Mansard (+7.8%), NEM Insurance (+9.7%) and Oando Plc (+2.1%).
Lastly, the banking and consumer goods indices gained 0.8 per cent and 0.3 per cent respectively, buoyed by price appreciation in Zenith Bank (+2.0%), UBA (+2.4%) and International Breweries (+2.5%).
Investor sentiment strengthened
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. NEM Insurance (+9.7%), BOC Gas (+9.5%) and Linkage Assurance (+9.3%) were the best-performing tickers while Sovereign Trust Insurance (-8.3%), Eterna Plc (-8.2%) and Deap Capital (-8.0%) were the biggest losers.
NSE 30 The NSE 30 Index rose by 0.17 per cent to close at 1,650.72 points as against 1,647.92 points on the previous day. Market turnover closed with a traded volume of 113.76 million units. Flour Mills and International Breweries were the key gainers, while Fidelity Bank and Guaranty Trust Bank were the only losers. Foreign Exchange Market Elsewhere, the currency market was fairly stable, as the naira was unchanged at […]
