- NGX All Share Index grows by 34% in six months
BY FESTUS OKOROMADU, ABUJA
The All-Share Index, which tracks the movement of all equities listed on the Nigerian Exchange Limited, rose by 34.11 per cent in the first six months under the administration of President Bola Tinubu.
This is a positive trend compared to the first six months under his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, when the ASI recorded a dip of 19.51 per cent, according to data from Statisense.
This was a negative trend that had been replicated four years earlier in 2010 when former president, Goodluck Jonathan took office and the ASI depreciated 22.57 per cent from 25,829.75 to 20,000.76
At the time, the Head, Financial Institutions Ratings at Agusto & Co, Ayo Olubunmi questioned, “What policies can they put in place to ensure this positive sentiment is sustained? We all know this sentiment, after the transition, after the new government comes into power, they will have a brief honeymoon period in which either to sustain this positive sentiment or it will revert to a negative one.
“Don’t forget that after the 2015 election, when Muhammadu Buhari became the president, that positive sentiment was way much, then they were calling it the ‘Buhari effect’ and someone even nicknamed it ‘Buharieconomics’, but given the capital market attitude of the government then, we noticed that the sentiment was almost completely wiped away.”
Labeling it a positive spot for the Tinubu administration to launch its policies, Olubunmi said, ‘’they are not starting from ground zero but more work needs to be done. More efforts need to be put in place to ensure that that sentiment is sustained.”
Thus far, the sentiments had been sustained with the ASI crossing the historic 70,000 basis points in early November.
While some analysts noticed that investors had brushed aside projections of mixed sentiments, foreign exchange concerns and the macroeconomic headwinds in the market to focus on the impressive third-quarter results of listed companies, the Managing Director of Wyoming Capital, Tajudeen Olayinka, said that the decision of the Supreme Court putting to rest contentions about Nigeria’s presidency was also a factor in the bullish run of the capital market, which resulted in the historic high.
“The moment the litigation around the presidency was settled, it was believed that there would be no more distractions around the President and he could focus on the economy and those things that would affect the market positively.
“Secondly, the third quarter results from some of these public companies, especially the banking sector, we saw significant improvement perhaps because of the forex revaluation gains,” he said.
According to Statisense which tracked the performance of the ASI for the first six months of each administration from 1999 till date, the Tinubu administration had recorded the highest positive outcome for the ASI.
The report revealed that the first six months of former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration saw the ASI grow by 3.38% to 5,108.08 from 4,919.51.
The ASI grew by 10.10% during the first six months of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.
Speaking at the induction ceremony of new dealing clerks, the Chief Executive Officer of the NGX, Temi Popoola, said that the outlook for the market was positive, given the disposition of the government.
He said, “I do genuinely believe that when you look at everything, we have today a Central Bank governor who is pretty much like one of us. We have a Finance Minister who is like one of us. We have a President who also understands what capital markets do. You have several people in the infrastructure ecosystem, MOFI is an example, they understand what we’re doing. They’re one of us, and we’re at a point where we have been waiting for a very long time, where capital markets are needed to stimulate the growth of our country and the people.”
NGX sustains bullish trend as investors gain N129.88bn on Tuesday
Equities trading on the Nigerian Exchange Limited maintained its positive momentum on Tuesday as its All-Share Index witnessed an upward trajectory of 0.33 percent to close higher at 71,907.26 points.
Consequently, the market capitalization of listed equities had an uptick of 0.33 percent adding N129.88 billion in value to close at N39.35 trillion, as the year-to-date gain of the ASI hit 40.30 percent.
The major tickers for investors on Tuesday included stocks such as INFINITY, SCOA, DAARCOMM, ROYALEX, and NEIMETH as their share prices experienced appreciable gains of 9.79 percent, 9.46 percent, 8.82 percent, 8.47 percent and 7.89 percent, respectively.
Performance across the sub-sector gauges tracked was bearish as three out of five stocks closed in the red zone.
NGX Insurance, NGX Oil/Gas and NGX Industrial Goods indexes declined by 0.49 percent, 1.03 percent and 0.01 percent, respectively.
On the flip side, the Banking and Consumer Goods indices advanced by 0.67 percent and 0.01 percent, respectively.
Trading on the NGX mellowed with the total deals and volume declining by 7.32 percent and 14.86 percent to 6,498 deals and 319.56 million units.
Meanwhile, the total traded value for the day surged by 52.54 percent to N5.88 billion.
At the close of the trading session, JULIUS BERGER emerged as the most actively traded security in terms of volume and value with 42.54 million units worth N1.46 billion, across 42 trades
