By Chukwuma Umerorah
Bulls resurfaced on the local bourse on Wednesday as the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) All Share Index (ASI) rose by 0.18 per cent with investors wealth collectively adding N96.78 billion marking its first positive performance for the week.
This was spurred by investors renewed interests majorly in banking stocks namely Sterling Bank, GTCO, Zenith Bank, Access Corp. Other blue-chip stocks such as Oando, United Capital, MTN Nigeria also witnessed significant levels of appreciation.
The NGX ASI gained 170.46 basis points and closed the day’s trade at 97,098.98 basis points from an opening value of 96,928.52 points. Similarly, Market capitalization grew to N55.150 trillion against N55.033 trillion.
At the end of the mid-week trading session, a total of 636.5 million unit of shares corresponding to a market value of N12.77 billion were exchanged in 9,744 transactions. This represents a 42 per cent improvement in volume, 90 per cent improvement in turnover, and 4 per cent improvement in deals when compared to the previous NGX trading day.
Accesscorp was the most active stock (when measured in volume) trading 112.6 million unit of shares valued at N2.10 billion. They were followed by United Capital which exchanged 74.42 million shares valued at N1.19 billion while GTCO traded 74.3 million shares at N3.33 billion.
Out of the 119 equities that participated in Wednesday’s trading, 27 stocks appreciated while 23 depreciated. Red Star Express led the gainers with double-digit value appreciation of 10 per cent to close at N4.18 per share. They were closely followed by Oando which gained 9.98 per cent and closed at N33.60 per share while RTBRISCOE saw an increase of 9.90 per cent and ended the day’s trade at N1.11 per share.
On the losing side was Neimeth declining by 7.69 per cent in value to N1.80 per share. Honeywell Flour lost 6.10 per cent closing at N3.85 per share while Sovrenins went down by 5.56 per cent and closed the day’s trade at N0.51 per share.