NSE Live! Equities recover with N36b gains

Nigerian equities regained the uptrend on Tuesday as investors stepped up bargain-hunting for low-priced stocks, especially in the banking sector. After losing N54 billion in opening trades on Monday, equities rallied back with total gain of N36 billion on Tuesday.

With 16 advancers to 18 decliners, increased bargain-hunting narrowed down the lingering selling sentiments. Aggregate market value of all quoted equities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) rose from N8.720 trillion to close at N8.756 trillion.

The sovereign index for the Nigerian equities market, the All Share Index (ASI)-a value-based common-share index that tracks prices of all quoted equities on the NSE, recorded a day-on-day gain of 0.42 per cent to close at 25,454.75 points as against its opening index of 25,349.07 points. The modest gain helped to reduce the negative average year-to-date return to -11.13 per cent.

Analysts at FSDH Securities stated that the uptrend was driven by speculative activities.

Analysts at Cowry Asset Management Limited noted that the “the positive performance  of  the  index  was  in  part  driven  by  banking and  consumer goods  stocks”. The NSE Banking Index and NSE Consumer Goods Index rose by 0.4 per cent and 1.5 per cent respectively.

Low-priced banking stocks dominated the top activities chart. The three most active stocks were Sterling Bank, with 38.81 million shares; FCMB Group, 20.17 million shares and Wema Bank, which recorded a turnover of 13.31 million shares. Total turnover stood at 177.35 million shares valued at N1.01 billion in 3,304 deals.

Nigerian Breweries led the gainers with a gain of N3.98 to close at N106.59. Seplat Petroleum Development Company followed with a gain of 45 kobo to close at N306.50. Nascon Allied Industries rallied 34 kobo to close at N7.25. Custodian and Allied gained 19 kobo to close at N4.09 while E-Tranzact added 14 kobo to close at N2.94.

On the other hand, the NSE Insurance Index declined by 0.7 per cent. The NSE Oil & Gas index also dropped by 0.3 per cent while the NSE Industrial Goods Index slipped by 0.06 per cent.

“In the absence of a major driver to stoke investors’ sentiment, we expect oscillatory movements in market performance to persist on account of bargain hunting and profit taking activities,” Afrinvest Securities, a Lagos-based trader on the NSE, stated.

 

 

RipplesNigeria… without borders, without fears

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now