Chinwendu Obienyi
Price appreciation in the shares of Unilever, Dangote Cement and UBA, lifted trading activities on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) yesterday as the All-Share Index (ASI) rebound 0.12 per cent to close at 32,453.7 points.
As a result of this development, Year-to-Date (YtD) gain improved to 3.4 per cent and market capitalisation increased by N14 billion to N12.1 trillion. On the flip side, activity level weakened as volume and value traded declined 10.1 and 12.1 per cent to 422.7 million units and N3.7 billion respectively.
The most active stocks by volume were Diamond Bank (97.6 million units), Transcorp (41.1 million units) and Zenith Bank (40.3 million units) while by value, Zenith Bank (N997.1 million ), GT Bank (N992.6 million) and Access Bank (N263.7 million) led.
Across sectors, performance was mixed, albeit with a bullish bias as 3 of 5 indices advanced. The Insurance index rose 1.2 per cent as NEM (+5.0 per cent) and CUSTODIAN (+1.7 per cent ) recorded gains. Also, the Industrial and Consumer Goods indices inched 0.7 and 0.3 per cent respectively, due to buying interest in WAPCO (+3.1 per cent) and PZ (+5.2 per cent ). On the other hand, the Oil & Gas and Banking indices declined, down 0.8 and 0.5 per cent respectively on the back of profit taking in OANDO (-5.2 per cent) and Access Bank (-0.8 per cent).
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 1.7x, an improvement from the 0.7x recorded yesterday as 22 stocks advanced against the 13 stocks that declined. The best performers were LIVESTOCK (+10.0 per cent), ABC Transport(+10.0 per cent) and Unity Bank (+9.6 per cent), while Union Bank of Nigeria (-8.0 per cent), Oando (-5.2 per cent) and Dangote Flour (-4.6 per cent) were the worst performing stocks.