Bargain Hunting Increases NSE Market Cap, Investors Gain ₦8.2bn
Bargain hunting lifted the Nigerian Stock Exchange market capitalisation as investors’ fortunes rise by ₦8.2 billion on Wednesday.
The domestic equities market closed positive for the first time this week as the All-Share Index rose 6 basis points (bps) to settle at 24,130.26 points.
The push follows bargain hunting in AIRTELAF (+3.4%), DANGSUGAR (+5.2%) and GUARANTY (+0.9%).
As a result, investors gained ₦8.2bn as market capitalisation advanced to ₦12.6 trillion while YTD loss moderated to -10.1%.
Activity level strengthened as average volume and value traded rose by 3bps and 66.4% to 208.2m units and ₦1.8bn respectively.
The top traded stocks by volume were STERLING (77.2m units), UBA (19.8m units) and ZENITH (16.0m units).
MTNN led by value with ₦296.1 million, followed by ZENITH ₦247.9 million and NESTLE ₦235.2 million.
Afrinvest stated that performance across sectors under its analysts’ coverage was mixed as 3 of 6 indices advanced, 2 declined while the Oil & Gas remained flat.
Meanwhile, the AFR-ICT index (+1.6%) gained the most owing to buying interest in AIRTELAFR (+3.4%).
Similarly, 0.9% price appreciation in GUARANTY, 0.8% in ACCESS and 7.7% in CUTIX drove gains in the 0.4% in Banking and Industrial Goods (+1bp) indices.
Bargain Hunting Drives Equities Market Upward
On the contrary, sell pressures in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-9.8%), NASCON (-4.0%) and WAPIC (-9.1%) weighed on the Consumer Goods (-1.3%) and Insurance (-0.9%) indices respectively.
Overall, investor sentiment as measured by market breadth rose to 0.7x from the 0.5x recorded in the previous session as 11 stocks advanced against the 15 decliners.
The top gainers were CUTIX (+7.7%), DANGSUGAR (+5.2%) and MBENEFIT (+4.8%).
Thus, JBERGER (-9.9%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-9.8%) and LINKASSURE (-9.8%) lost the most.
“We maintain our outlook of a mixed performance for the week”, Afrinvest stated.
Bargain Hunting Increases NSE Market Cap, Investors Gain ₦8.2bn
