The Nigerian equities market showed on Thursday a commitment to record another week of gains as it continued a bullish trading trend resulting in a positive market breadth as it closed higher by 482.97 basis points than the previous session.
Analysis of market activities indicates that investors interest in Tier-1 banks namely ZENITHBANK, GTCO, alongside DANGSUGAR which gained 0.86 percent, 1.20 percent and 4.43 percent respectively offset losses in STANBIC, UBA, and ACCESSCORP down by 1.44 percent, 2.10 percent and 3.47 percent respectively, thus pushing the market benchmark index, the All-Share Index upward by 0.62 percent to close the day’s trading at 78,020.54 points.
Consequently, the market capitalization of listed equities also increased by 0.62 percent to reach N42.69 trillion, translating to N264.29 billion in Naira terms, while the year-to-date gain of the index rose to 4.34 percent.
Further analysis shows that the bullish rally is attributable to investors’ strategic move to take position in stocks with huge potentials of delivering early profits, as a result, the Exchange accounted for more gainers (48) than losers (23).
However, the major tickers for investors during Thursday trading session included LEARNAFRICA, TRANSCORP, IKEJAHOTEL, STERLINGNG and UNITY BANK, as their share prices recorded gains of 10.00 percent, 9.93 percent, 9.92 percent, 9.83 percent and 9.74 percent, respectively.
On the other hand, the major decliners for the day were MULTIVERSE, MEYER, TRIPPLEG, JOHNHOLT and ABCTRANS with share price declines of 9.97 percent, 9.75 percent, 9.30 percent, 8.62 percent and 8.25 percent, respectively.
Trading activity on the NGX was reflective of the bullish trend with the total deals, volume and value increasing by 11.58 percent, 6.11 percent and 4.40 percent to 12,976 trades, 984.19 million units and N11.16 billion, respectively.
Performance across the sectors remained positive as the NGX Banking, NGX Insurance, NGX Consumer Goods and NGX Oil/Gas indexes increased by 13bps, 262bps, 55bps and 73bps, respectively. The Industrial sector emerged as the only laggard with a decline of 0.01 percent.
At the conclusion of the trading session, FCMB was the most traded security in terms of volume with 106.81 million units changing hands in 433 deals, while FIDELITY BK led in traded value at N1.31 billion.
