By Chinwendu Obienyi
The bullish performance of the equities market persisted into this week as the All Share Index rose 4.2 per cent week-on-week (W-oW) settle at to 32,715.2 points.
This is even as investors continued to buy into cheap assets – Dangote cement (+4.6 per cent), Nigerian Breweries (+6.4 per cent) and Stanbic (+3.2 per cent) – bucking consensus expectation for increased sell offs in trading sessions leading to the general elections.
As a result of increased buying interest, the benchmark index rose on 4 of 5 trading sessions, year to date return improved to 4.1 per cent and market capitalization rose by N442 billion to close the trading week at N12.2 trillion.
Similarly, activity level improved as average volume and value advanced by 49.7 and 4.7 per cent to 566.4 million units and N5.6 billion.
The top traded stocks by volume were Diamond Bank (406.6 million units), Access Bank (207.2 million units) and Zenith Bank (194.1 million units) while by value GT Bank (N4.9 billion) Zenith Bank (N4.8 billion) and Dangote cement(N2.9 billion) led.
Across sectors, performance was equally bullish with 4 of 5 indices advancing W-o-W. The Consumer Goods and Oil & Gas indices gained, up 5.9 and 5.6 per cent respectively due to price appreciation in Nigerian Breweries (+6.4 per cent), Nestle (+4.3 per cent) Seplat (+10.4 per cent) and Oando (+20.0 per cent).
The Industrial Goods and Banking indices also closed the week positive, up 3.7 and 2.1 per cent on the back of gains in Dangote cement (+4.6 per cent) WAPCO (+4.4 per cent), ETI (+5.1 per cent), UBA (+4.6 per cent) and Zenith Bank (+1.4 per cent) while Insurance index was the lone loser, down 0.2 per cent due to sell pressures in Custodian (-2.4 per cent) and NEM (-2.0 per cent).
Investor sentiment measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 2.9x from 2.5x recorded the previous week as 56 stocks advanced against 19 that declined.
The best performers this week were WEMA (+45.1 per cent), Livestock feeds(+44.0 per cent ) and Dangote flour (+33.6 per cent) while Cileasing (-18.9 per cent), MRS(-9.9 per cent) and Academy (-9.8 per cent ) were the worst performers.
Market analysts believe that sentiments have strengthened due to the increased investor expectation for post-election stability and positive earnings releases.
In an emailed note to Sunday Sun, Analysts at
Afrinvest said, “We expect the direction of market to be largely
determined by the election outcomes next week, nonetheless, we expect the
market to perform positively based on the sentiments we have observed this
week.”
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