NGX Indexes Close Green Amidst Huge Cross Deals
The Nigerian Exchange (NGX) sectoral performance was relatively impressive, with five out of six indexes closing positively on Thursday. The positive sectoral performance came amidst huge cross deals among significant investors.
Block trades, deals often conducted outside the Nigerian Exchange trading platform, help in price stability and have become a growing trend in recent times. Stockbrokers said it helped influential investors’ foray into the local market easy and faster with lower risk than open market transactions.
Trading result from the local bourse showed that industrial and insurance indices led market rally on Thursday. The banking index climbed by 26 basis points due to positive price appreciation recorded by GTCO, First Holdco and others.
Investors’ interest in banking names remained top-notch, as reflected in significant volume driven by Fidelity Bank. Fidelity Bank was the most traded stock by volume at 42.01 million units.
The transaction on the bank shares accounted for 12.20% of total trades consummated in the market, while DANGCEM led by value at ₦11.0 billion. Gainers that fuelled the banking index uptick include FCMB (+2.88%), GTCO (+1.06%), and FIRSTHOLDCO (+0.32%).
Buying interest in counters like DANGCEM (+1.89%), SUNUASSUR (+9.90%), INTBREW (2.19%), and GTCO (+1.06%) was primarily responsible for the upticks in the Industrial Goods (+0.67%), Insurance (+0.64%), Consumer Goods (+0.43%), and Banking (+0.26%) indexes, respectively.
The Oil & Gas and Commodity indexes closed flat. The market recorded block trades in GTCO where investors closed 12.2 million units in deals.
Cross trade was also seen in Lafarge Africa Ticker: WAPCO with 9.4 million units traded outside the Nigerian Exchange. Gains in FIRSTHOLDCO came as investors traded 24.9m units in cross deals. Investors’ also transacted 70 million units of CONHALLPLC and 297,000 unit of ARADEL in an off market deals. GTCO Spikes to N2.128 Trn on New Shares Listing
