The local bourse rebounded in yesterday’s trading session, as the market capitalisation increased by N80.6bn to close at N12.1tn due to buying interests in bellwether stocks – ZENITH(+5.6%), GUARANTY (+3.3%) and UBA (+4.6%).
Similarly, the All Share Index (ASI) rose 0.7% to 32,406.18 points, while Year To Date (YTD) gain settled at 3.1%.
Activity level also strengthened as volume and value traded improved 55.4% and 23.7% to 361.8m units and N4.2bn respectively.
TRANSCORP (120.2m units), ZENITH (37.3m units) and FBNH (31.2m units) were the top traded by volume while DANGCEM (N951.6m), ZENITH (N925.5m) and GUARANTY (N778.0m) led the top traded by value.
Performance across sectors was bullish as 4 of 5 indices under our coverage trended northwards. The Banking index led gainers, up 3.0% following bargain hunting in ZENITH (+5.6%) and GUARANTY (+3.3%).
The Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods indices trailed, advancing 0.7% and 0.3% respectively on the back of gains in OANDO (+6.3%),DANGSUGAR (+4.1%) and UNILEVER (+0.5%).
The Insurance index also trailed, up 0.2% following investor interests in CUSTODIAN (+8.3%) and CORNERSTONE (+5.0%). On the flip side, the Industrial Goods index shed 0.2% on account of sell offs in DANGCEM (-0.4%) and FIRSTALUM (-10.0%).
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 1.1x from 0.3x recorded, yesterday, as 16 stocks advanced against 14 decliners.
JAPAULOIL (+9.5%), SOVRENINS (+9.5%) and ABCTRANS (+9.1%) were today’s best performing stocks while FIRSTALUM (-10.0%), TRANSCORP (-9.7%) and WEMA (-9.7%) declined the most.
Analysts at Afrinvest said: “Despite today’s rebound in market performance, we advise investors to trade cautiously as we expect sell pressures to return to the market by close of the week – eve of the rescheduled presidential elections.”
