Investors in the equities market of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) recorded a gain of N15 billion in first day trading of August, 2019, mainly on account of shares of MTN Nigeria, Dangote Sugar and NASCON Allied.
At the end of yesterday trading, the NSE All Share Index increased by 0.11 per cent or 30.2 basis points to close at 27,748.46 basis points from 27,718.26 basis points it opened.
Specifically, market capitalisation closed at N13.523 trillion, an increase of 0.11 per cent or N15 billion from N13.508 trillion the market opened for trading.
Hence, market breadth closed in favour of the bear, recording 12 gainers and 16 losers while Year-Till-Date (YTD) loss dropped to 11.77 per cent from 11.81 per cent.
However, activity level was weak as volume and value traded fell 61.4 per cent and 57.2 per cent to settle at 97.4 million units and N1.8 billion respectively. The most traded stocks by volume were Zenith Bank (11.6 million units), United Bank for Africa (11.2 million units) and Lafarge WAPCO (10.2 million units) while Dangote Cement (N505.7 million), MTN Nigeria (N397.8 million) and Guaranty Trust Bank (N235.1 million) were the most traded by value.
All sectoral indices ended bearish save for NSE Consumer Goods and AFR-ICT. The Banking index led the laggards, shedding one per cent on the back of losses in Guaranty Trust Bank (1.8 per cent), Access Bank (2.3 per cent) and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (2.4 per cent).
The Insurance and Oil & Gas indices trailed with losses of 0.6 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively due to sell-offs in Wapic Insurance (7.1 per cent), Mutual Benefits Assurance(4.2 per cent) and Forte Oil (8.1 per cent). The Industrial index also shed eight basis points, driven by weakness in Lafarge Wapco (0.7 per cent).
Conversely, the Consumer Goods index gained eight basis points following price appreciation in NASCON Allied (6.9 per cent), Flour Mills (1.3 per cent) and Honey Flour Mills (5.3 per cent). The AFR-ICT index also gained 0.9 per cent due to buying interest in MTN Nigeria (1.6 per cent).
“As the equities market welcome more Q2 financials, we retain our opinion that the market is set for a rebound. We therefore advise investors to accumulate fundamentally justified stocks at this time,” Analysts at APT Securities and Fund Limited stated.
Furthermore, Fidson Healthcare led the price gainers by 9.76 per cent to close at N4.50 per share, trailed by Berger Paints that rose by 9.65 per cent to close at N6.25 per share while NASCON Allied Industries appreciated by 6.87 per cent to close at N14 per share for trading yesterday.
Contrarily, Eterna led the price losers by 10 per cent to close at N2.70 per share, trailed by NCR Nigeria that dropped by 8.62 per cent to close at N5.30 per share while Forte Oil declined by 8.14 per cent to close by N18.05 per share.
Analysts at Afrinvest Limited said that, “We do not expect the bullish performance to be sustained as investors maintain a risk-off approach towards equities.”
Source: Nigerian NewsDirect
