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By Chukwuma Umeorah
The local equities market on Tuesday, maintained its bullishrun, with the All-share index (ASI) increasing by 0.11 per cent adding N61 billion as investors showed strong interest in Nestle Nigeria, Zenith bank, Berger Paints, GTCO, MTNN and 15 other stocks.
The ASI and Market Capitalization rose from the previous trading day’s lows of 98,176.58 basis points and N55.536 trillion to 98,285.33 basis points and N55.597 trillion, respectively. This drove the year-to-date (YtD) return higher to 31.44 per cent.
This positive movement came despite the outcome of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting where the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) increased the benchmark interest rate by a moderate 150 basis points to 26.25 per cent in an intensified effort to curb inflation.
The MPC also retained the cash reserve ratio (CRR) for deposit money banks at 45 per cent, maintained the asymmetric corridor at +100bps/-300bps, and kept the liquidity ratio steady at 30 per cent.
Meanwhile 121 equities participated in Tuesday’s trading session ending with 20 gainers and 20 losers. A total of 222.89 million shares with corresponding market value of N5.148 billion were traded in 7,228 deals. Compared with the previous NGX trading day, the data shows 45 per cent decline in volume, 23 per cent decline in turnover, and 14 per cent decline in deals.
Banking stocks were the most active stocks in terms of volume with GTCO trading, Accesscorp and UBA collectively trading 457.86 million units of shares valued at N2.587 billion.
Berger Paints emerged the best performing stock with its value appreciating by 9.96 per cent closing at N14.90 per share, followed by Nestle which added 9.76 per cent closing at N900 per share while Sovrenins gained 8.11 per cent closing the day’s trade at N0.40 per share.
