Equities Market Kick-Starts the Week Positive… NSE ASI up 51bps

The Equities market reversed Friday’s negative close to open the week 51bps higher; consequently the All Share Index settled at 43,119.00 points while YTD return expanded to 12.7%. Investors in turn gained N78.8bn as market capitalization closed at N15.4tn.

The major drivers of today’s positive close were DANGCEM (+1.2%), GUARANTY (+2.2%) and ZENITH (+2.4%) although buying interest was observed across small and mid-cap stocks. On the contrary, activity level declined as average volume and value traded fell 47.6% and 55.7% to 730.6m units and N6.3bn respectively.

Banking Index, Sole Gainer
Performance across sectors was largely negative as 4 of 5 indices closed in the red. The Industrial Goods index led laggards, shedding 1.6% largely on the back of losses in WAPCO (-5.0%). The Insurance index followed closely, falling 1.0% as investors booked profit in LINKASSURE (-4.4%) and WAPIC (-3.5%). Similarly, sell offs in FORTE (-4.7%),NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-1.3%) and FLOURMILLS (-4.3%) dragged the Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods indices 0.8% and 0.1% lower respectively. On the flip side, the Banking index was the lone gainer, rising 1.1% due to a sustained rally in GUARANTY (+2.2%) and ZENITH (+2.4%).

Investor Sentiment Remains Positive
Investor sentiment measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) remained positive at 1.0x from 1.0x recorded the previous Friday consequent on 26 stocks advancing against 26 decliners. The top performing stocks were FCMB (+9.8%), SKYE (+8.3%) and CAVERTON (+5.0%) while ETERNA (-6.8%), UBN (-5.0%) and WAPCO (-5.0%) were the worst performing stocks for the day.

Although the equities market performed positively today, we expect a largely mixed performance this week as we anticipate profit taking in sessions ahead.
In the NASD OTC Securities Exchange, total volume and value traded stood at 26,508  units and N4.1m respectively. The SDFCWAMCO was the instrument traded today.

Market Statistics Monday, 15th January 2018