In yesterday’s trading session, the All Share Index advanced 69bps to settle at 33,191.45 points on account of buy interests in market bellwethers –DANGCEM (+2.1%), NESTLE (+2.2%) and FBNH (+4.3%). Similarly, market capitalisation rose by N83.5bn to N12.1tn while YTD loss moderated to -13.0%. However, activity level weakened as average volume and value traded dipped 39.3% and 110.6% to 185.1m units and N2.4bn respectively.
The top traded stocks by volume were FCMB (27.6m units), TRANSCORP (24.9m units) and GUARANTY (15.2m units) while GUARANTY (N553.9m), ZENITH (N318.8m) and NESTLE (N299.7m) led the top traded stocks by value.
Bullish Sector Performance
Performance across sectors was largely bullish as 3 of 5 indices under our coverage trended upwards. The Industrial Goods and Consumer Goods indices advanced the most, up 0.9% and 0.2% respectively on the back of gains in DANGCEM (+2.1%), NESTLE (+2.2%) and DANGFLOUR(+2.7%) while the Oil & Gas index rose by 0.1% as a result of buy interests in OANDO (+0.9%).
On the flip side, the Insurance index declined by 0.7%, following losses in NIGERINS (-7.1%) and NEM (-4.0%) while the Banking index shed 0.6% on account of sell-offs in ETI (-5.0%) and UBA (-1.2%).
Investor Sentiment Weakens
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) weakened to 0.8x from 1.1x recorded in the previous trading session as 14 stocks appreciated against 18 decliners. TRANSCORP (+9.6%), HONEYFLOUR (+4.4%) and FBNH (+4.3%) were the best performing stocks while FIRSTALU (-9.1%), PZ (-7.7%) and MCNICHOLS (-7.4%) led laggards. On the back of the Q3 corporate earnings releases, we anticipate a bullish run in the equities market in the near term.
