Investors’ fortune increase as stock market cap hit N15.3 trillion
The equities market investors’ fortune has increased as the local bourse recorded gained on Monday.
The gain came on the back of an improved sentiment which resulted to shares appreciation on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (www.nse.com.ng).
Analysts notes showed that the week started on a bullish note as price appreciation in MTNN (+10.0%), UBA (+3.6%) and UACN (+7.8%) buoyed the broad index to 29,633.58 points, up 0.7%.
Consequently, year to date (YTD) return jumped to 10.4% while market capitalisation increased by ₦112.6 billion on the first trading day to close at ₦15.3 trillion.
Activity level advanced as volume and value traded rose 24.0% and 77.5% respectively to 348.2 million units and ₦8.5 billion.
Afrinvest listed the most active stocks by volume were to include ACCESS (63.7 million units), UBA (40.6 million units) and ZENITH (39.5 million units) while SEPLAT (₦2.6 billion), MTNN (₦1.5 billion) and ZENITH (₦861.1 million) led by value.
The sector performance ended mixed with the AFR-ICT index up +5.6% gaining the most, following 10% price appreciation in MTNN.
The Insurance and Oil & Gas indices also inched higher by 0.3% and 0.1% due to gains in MANSARD (+2.4%), LASACO (+7.4%) and OANDO (+2.6%).
Meanwhile, the Industrial Goods index lost 3.2% as sell-offs in WAPCO (-2.6%) dragged the index down.
Also, the Banking and Consumer Goods indices pared 0.7% and 0.4% respectively following price depreciation in FBNH (-5.2%), GUARANTY (-1.4%), UNILEVER (-5.3%) and DANGSUGAR (-1.3%).
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) advanced to 0.7x from the 0.4x recorded in previous session as 16 stocks advanced relative to 21 laggards.
The top performing stocks were MTNN (+10.0%), NPFMCRFBK (+9.7%) and UACN (+7.8%) while CADBURY (-10.0%), TRANSCOHOT (-9.2%) and NEIMETH (-8.9%) were the top losers.
“We expect the bullish run to persist as investors continue to show renewed interest in the market”, Afrinvest noted.
By Ogochi Ndubuisi
