Equity market gains as index surge 12 basis points
Investors gain as index surged 12 basis points after trading on Wednesday. Analysts observed that buying interest in bellwethers drive the gains recorded in the equities market.
All-Share Index (ASI) rose 0.1% to settle at 26,397.94 points due to buying interest in DANGCEM (+1.6%), UBA (+2.6%) and FBNH (+1.9%).
Thus, market capitalisation increased by N15.6 billion to settle at N12.9 trillion while year to date ,YTD, loss moderated to -16.0%.
However, volume and value traded declined by 58.1% and 64.5% to 290.0m units and N2.8 billion respectively.
The top traded stocks by volume were UAC-PROP (30.3 million units), ZENITH (26.8 million units) and GUARANTY (18.1 million units) while NESTLE (N1.1 billion), GUARANTY (N475.0 million) and ZENITH (N460.9 million) were the top traded stocks by value.
Read: https://dmarketforces.com/investors-fortune-decline-n54-billion-as-market-index-drops/
Performance across sectors was largely bearish as 4 of 6 indices under Afrinvest analysts coverage closed negative save the Consumer Goods and AFR-ICT indices which closed flat.
The Banking and Insurance indices led the laggards, depreciating 0.8% and 0.6% respectively, following profit-taking in ACCESS (-3.4%), ZENITH (-1.5%), NEM (-2.9%) and LASACO (-7.1%).
Similarly, the Oil & Gas and Industrial Goods indices declined 0.3% and 0.1% respectively on the back of losses in OANDO (-2.9%) and WAPCO (-3.0%).
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) weakened to 0.6x from 1.0x recorded yesterday as 7 stocks appreciated against 11 decliners.
UAC-PROP (+9.0%), AGLEVENT (+7.7%) and UBA (+2.6%) were the top outperforming stocks while UNIONDAC (-8.3%), LASACO (-7.1%) and JAIZBANK (-6.2%) led the laggards.
“Notwithstanding today’s positive performance, we maintain our bearish outlook on the market, although we expect third quarter earnings to guide investors sentiment”, Afrinvest said.
Equity market gains as index surge 12 basis points
