After a period of the equity market lurking around in the woods, the bulls sustained its dominance last week, favoring investors with additional N244.2billion to raise market capitalisation to a high of N20.4 trillion.
Domestic Equities Market: Bullish Run Sustained as Investors Hunt for Bargains
Last week, the NigerianStock Exchange(NSE) All-Share Index (ASI) rose 1.1per cent week-on-week (w/w) to settle at 39,156.28 points while Year-to-Date (YTD) loss moderated to -2.8 per cent.
The positive performance was driven by bargain hunting in notable bellwether stocks like DANGCEM, WAPCO, STANBIC and SEPLAT. As a result, market capitalisation rose N224.2 billion w/w to close at N20.4 trillion.
Trading activity was mixed as average volume fell 1.8 per cent w/w to 289.1 million units while value traded rose 34.9 per cent w/w to ₦
N3.5 billion. The top traded stocks by volume were ZENITH (79.3 million units), STERLING (52.6 million units) and FIDELITY (48.7 million units) while NESTLE (N2.1 billion), ZENITH (N1.8 billion) and GUARANTY (N1.0 billion) topped trades by value.
Across sectors, performance was bullish as four of six indices under our coverage closed in the green.
The Industrial Goods index led gainers, up 2.4 per cent w/w due to buying interest in CUTIX (+23.6 per cent), DANGCEM (+4.5 per cent) and WAPCO (+2.9 per cent). Similarly, the Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods indices advanced 1.4 per cent and 1.1 per cent w/w respectively following price appreciation in CONOIL (+9.6 per cent), SEPLAT (+1.5 per cent), PZ (+9.1 per cent) and UNILEVER (+7.6 per cent). Gains in STANBIC (+6.1 per cent) and UBN (+5.5 per cent) buoyed the Banking index as it rose by 0.9 per cent w/w. On the other hand, the Insurance and AFR-ICT indices closed in the red, down 4.1 per cent and 0.7 per cent w/w respectively, on account of sell-offs in NEM (-13.5 per cent), WAPIC (-6.8 per cent) and MTNN (-1.4 per cent).
