The local bourse halted a 7-day bearish run yesterday as the All Share Index (ASI) rose 1.1% to close at 42,171.80 points while YTD gain improved to 10.3%.
Accordingly, investors gained N166.4bn in value as market capitalization increased to N15.1tn. Today’s positive performance can be largely attributed to buying interest in Banking and Consumer counters with ZENITH (+5.0%), UBA (+6.3%) and NESTLE (+1.9%) weighing the most on performance.
Also, activity level improved as volume and value traded advanced 10.7% and 28.1% to 520.7m units and N4.7bn respectively.
Banking Sector Leads Gainers
Sector Performance was largely positive as 4 of 5 indices closed northwards. The Banking index recorded the highest gain – up 2.7% on renewed interest in Banking stocks – driven by ZENITH (+5.0%), UBA (+6.3%) and ACCESS (+5.0%).
Similarly, price appreciation in MANSARD (+4.0%), WAPIC (+4.9%), NESTLE (+1.9%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES(+0.9%) pushed the Insurance and Consumer Goods indices 1.3% and 1.0% higher respectively.
The Industrial Goods index followed, up 0.2% on the back of gains in BETAGLASS (+4.9%) and BERGER (+4.8%). On the other hand, the Oil & Gas index was the lone loser, falling 0.3% largely due to sell pressures in FORTE (+1.8%) and TOTAL(+0.4%).
Market Breadth Improves
Market breadth (advance/decline ratio) which measures investor sentiment, improved to 1.3x from 0.4x recorded the previous day consequent on 25 stocks advancing against 19 stocks that declined.
The best performing stocks were SKYE (+10.0%), FCMB (+9.8%) and DIAMOND (+7.8%) while FIRSTALUM (-9.1%), LASACO (-5.9%) and ABCTRANS (-5.0%) were the worst performers. In line with expectation, the market rebounded today.
Following the improvement in investor sentiment, we anticipate positive market performance till the end of the week. We also expect sustained improvement in market activity as investors take position in stocks with attractive valuation.
In the NASD OTC Exchange, total volume and value traded stood at 577,500 units and N89.3m respectively.
