Investors Excited as Bull Runs Push Up Equities Capitalisation
The stock market returns to the positive track with persist bullish runs in the last few trading days. Building on the momentum from MTNN’s listing, the local bourse sustained a positive performance last week as the All-Share Index (ASI) recorded gains on 4 of 5 trading sessions, closing above the psychological benchmark of 30,000.0 points for the first time in six weeks.
Hence, the ASI rose 7.0% week on week, W-o-W, to settle at 30.881.3 points, year to date (YTD) return improved to -1.7% and market capitalisation increased by N885.0 billion to N13.6 trillion.
Similarly, the activity level strengthened as average volume and value traded advanced 46.9% and 265.2% to 294.1 million units and N6.6 billion respectively.
The top traded stocks by volume were MTNN (290.1 million units), SOVRENINS (281.8 million units) and UBA (100.3 million units) while MTNN (39.6 billion), DANGCEM (N3.3 billion) and GUARANTY (N1.9bn) were the top traded stocks by value.
At the start of the week, bargain hunting in MTNN and DANGCEM buoyed the benchmark index, up 1.7% W-o-W.
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On Tuesday and Wednesday, this was sustained with gains of 2.9% and 3.1% W-o-W respectively following price appreciation in market bellwethers – MTNN, DANGCEM and GUARANTY.
Similarly, sustained buying interest in DANGCEM, NESTLE and GUARANTY lifted the market on Thursday as the ASI advanced 1.1% W-o-W. By the close of the week, the market shed 1.9% due to profit-taking in DANGCEM, NIGERIAN BREWERIES and STANBIC.
Performance across sectors was a mixed week on week as 3 of 6 indices under Afrinvest analysts coverage closed northwards.
The AFR-ICT index gained the most, up 28.2% due to price appreciation in MTNN (+28.6).
In the same vein, buying interest in DANGCEM (+13.6%), BETAGLAS (+7.6%), AIICO (+6.2%) and NEM (+7.3%) drove the Industrial Goods and Insurance indices 3.5% and 1.2% higher respectively.
On the flip side, the Consumer Goods Index led decliners as it dipped 3.0%, dragged by profit-taking in LIVESTOCK (-15.6%) and FLOURMILL (-12.1%).
The Banking and Oil & Gas indices similarly shed 1.8% and 0.7% W-o-W respectively as ACCESS (-10.1%), UBA (-4.2%) and OANDO (-8.3x %) recorded losses.
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Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 0.7x from 0.4x recorded last Friday as 27 stocks advanced against 38 that declined.
“The top performers this week were THOMASWY (+29.0%), MTNN (+28.6%) and DANGCEM (+13.6%) while STERLING (-17.2%), ACADEMY (-16.7%) and NEIMETH (-16.4%) led laggards.
Following a bullish performance this week, we expect to see sell pressures next week as investors look to take profit on stocks that have recorded strong gains”, Afrinvest said.
Investors Excited as Bull Runs Push Up Equities Capitalisation
