Equities Investors Gain N421bn as All-Share Hits 15-year High
Equities investors trading highs and lows in the Nigerian bourse recorded more than N421 billion gain on Tuesday following sustained positive price movement records by financial and industrial stocks.
Pushing the year-to-date return upward, data from the Nigerian Exchange indicated that the All-Share Index trended upwards by 0.13% due to significant positioning across listed stocks with good fundamental, and solid dividend track records.
As investors pumped more money into the equities market, the Nigerian All-share index then moved above the 60,000-point mark to close at 60,108.86 points, led by sustained bargain-hunting activities in Banking shares.
Consequently, the year-to-date gain of the Nigerian Exchange All-share index (NGX ASI) climbed to 17.28% even as the number of gainers (51) recorded outweighed that of losers (13). The strong bargain hunting pushed the year-to-date return to 17.3%.
Stockbrokers at Cowry Asset told investors in a note that large-cap stocks such as GTCO, UBA, ZENITH BANK, TOTAL, SEPLAT, WAPCO, MTNN, and NB were the toast of investors.
“In a remarkable display of bullish momentum, the Nigerian equities market continued its upward trajectory, propelling the all-share-index to reach a remarkable 15-year high”, Futureview Financial Service said in its note.
Stockbrokers told investors that GTCO stood out as a top performer, achieving a substantial gain of 5.20% and becoming the second financial service company to surpass a market capitalization of N1 trillion.
Also, ZENITHBANK rose by 4.62%, SEPLAT exhibited a notable increase of 2.93%, while MTNN and STANBIC contributed gains of 2.77% and 2.03% respectively, according to market data cited by traders.
Lightweight stocks COURTVILLE (+10.0%) and OMATEK (+10.0%) topped the gainers’ list, while REDSTAREX (down by 10.0%) and CILEASING (dipped by 9.8%) recorded the highest losses of the day.
The total volume traded increased by 38.2% to 763.70 million units, value traded declined 4.01% to N12.53 billion in 9,463 deals. Ticker: ACCESSCORP was the most traded stock by volume at 111.67 million units, while GTCO was the most traded stock by value at N2.69 billion.
The market breadth experienced a substantial improvement as investor sentiment surged from 2.00x to 3.92x. This positive shift resulted in 51 stocks advancing, 13 declining, and 61 closing unchanged. >Nigerian Treasury Bills Yield Rises to 7%
Sectoral performance was broadly positive as the Banking (+3.5%), Oil & Gas (+3.2%), Consumer Goods (+0.4%), Industrial Goods (+0.2%), and Insurance (+0.2%) indices recorded gains. Overall, the equities market capitalisation gained N421.19 billion to close the day at N32.73 trillion.
