Market Statistics: Tuesday, 12th December 2017

Equities Halt Bearish Run…NSE ASI up 3bps
The Nigerian equities market rebounded today, albeit a marginal gain, following a 2-day negative trend as the All Share Index (ASI) rose 3bps to close at 38,924.63 points while YTD gain stood at 44.8%. Accordingly, market capitalisation increased by N3.7bn to N13.6tn.

Today’s performance can be majorly accorded to buy interest in UBN (+10.0%), DANGSUGAR (+3.9%) and GUARANTY (+0.6%). Similarly, activity level improved as volume and value traded increased 32.0% and 445.4% to 462.7m units and N26.8bn respectively. The surge in volume and value can be primarily attributed to trades in DANGCEM.

Bearish Sector Performance
Performance across sectors was largely bearish as 4 of 5 indices closed in the red. The Oil & Gas index was the biggest loser shedding 0.4% due to losses in MOBIL (-3.7%). Following closely were the Industrial Goods and Insurance indices which fell 0.3% apiece against the backdrop of price depreciations in WAPCO (-0.9%) and MANSARD (-0.5%) respectively.

In the same vein, sell offs in ETI (-4.0%) and ACCESS (-1.4%) dragged the Banking index 0.1% lower. On the other hand, the Consumer Goods index was the lone gainer, adding 0.3% due to gains in DANGSUGAR (+3.9%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+0.2%).

Investor Sentiment Strengthens
Investor sentiment measured by market breadth (advancers/decliners ratio) improved – although still soft – to 0.9x from 0.5x recorded in the previous trading session as 20 stocks advanced relative to 23 stocks that declined.

The best performers today were UBN (+10.0%), DIAMOND (+7.1%) and BERGER (+4.9%) while FCMB (-4.7%), FIDELITY (-4.6%) and NAHCO (-4.6%) led the losers chart.

Today’s positive performance signals that the round of profit taking witnessed in the prior two trading sessions may be over, hence we anticipate  increased buy interest in trading sessions ahead.