The Nigerian equity market sustained its bullish run on Thursday, driven largely by gains recorded by Airtel Africa, Dangote Cement, and Zenith Bank.
The All-Share Index was up by 2.1% to close at 36,239.62 points, while market capitalisation gained by ₦390.2billion to close at ₦18.9trillion, taking the year-to-date return to 35.0%.
The volume stocks which investors traded declined 47.1% to 343.6 million units, while the value of equities traded rose 90.2% to ₦4.3billion.
The most traded stocks by volume were FBNH (99.4m units), UBA (22.3m units), and ACCESS (20.9m units) while DANGCEM (₦1.3bn), FBNH (₦700.4m), and ZENITH (₦388.7m) led by value.
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The AFR-ICT sector advanced the most with a 5.7% gain, on the back of buying interest in Airtel Africa (+10.0%), it was followed by the Insurance and Industrial Goods indices rose 2.4% and 1.3% respectively following price appreciation in MANSARD (+9.1%), AIICO (+1.7%), and Dangote Cement (+2.6%).
The Banking and Oil & Gas sectors were also up 1.1% and 0.6% respectively because of price uptick in ZENITH (+2.75%), UBN (+3.8%), ARDOVA (+10.0%), and OANDO (+2.1%).
The Consumer Goods sector gained 0.23% as UNILEVER (+9.5%) and DANGSUGAR (+0.3%) ticked higher.
Airtel Africa (+10.0%), ARDOVA (+10.0%) and FTNCOCOA (+9.6%) led the 26 other gainers, while OMATEK (-9.1%), WAPIC (-9.1%) and CHAMPION (-9.0%) topped 14 other laggards.
