Equities Investors Gain ₦37.8 bn as Stock Market Opens Positive

Equities Investors Gain ₦37.8 bn as Stock Market Opens Positive

Equities investors gain ₦37.8 billion on Monday as the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) opens on a positive note.

Buying interest in BUACEMENT (+2.0%), GUARANTY (+1.6%) and FLOURMILL (+10.0%) buoyed the All-Share index 29 basis points (bps) to settle at 24,766.12 points.

Consequently, investors equities book gained ₦37.8 billion as market capitalisation increased to ₦12.9 trillion.

Meanwhile, year to date loss eased to -7.7%.

Afrinvest stated that activity level improved as volume and value traded advanced 83.6% and 34.5% to 186.5 million units and ₦1.3 billion respectively.

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The top traded stocks by volume were TRANSCORP which did 23.4 million units, CUSTODIAN traded 19.1 million units and GUARANTY 18.2 million units.

By value traded, GUARANTY led with total sum of ₦411.6 million, ZENITH did ₦134.3 million and CUSTODIAN did ₦97.7 million.

Performance across sectors was mixed albeit positively skewed as 3 of 6 indices under Afrinvest coverage advanced save the Oil & Gas and AFR-ICT indices which closed flat.

The Industrial Goods and Banking indices advanced 0.8% and 0.7% respectively due to buying interest in BUACEMENT (+2.0%), CUTIX (+3.0%), GUARANTY (+1.6%) and UBA (+1.6%).

Similarly, the Consumer Goods index rose 0.1% owing to price appreciation in FLOURMILL (+10.0%) and HONYFLOUR (+5.0%).

On the flip side, the Insurance index was the lone laggard, depreciating 2.4% on the back of losses in CUSTODIAN (-7.3%), AIICO (-9.6%) and NEM (-5.0%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth weakened to 1.2x from the 1.3x recorded previously as 19 stocks advanced against the 16 decliners.

The top gainers were NEIMETH (+10.0%), FLOURMILL (+10.0%) and UPL (+9.9%) while UACN (-10.0%), AIICO (-9.6%) and MBENEFIT (-8.7%) lost the most.

“We believe the performance of the market this week would be majorly dictated by the trend in earnings releases”, Afrinvest stated.