NGX ends 4 weeks bearish streak with N118.5bn gain

By Motolani Oseni

The equities segment of the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) at the close of trading activities for the week on Friday ended its four weeks bearish streak with a whopping N118.5 billion gain, following demand for growth stocks last week.

The local bourse turns positive after previous weeks of bearish tone as investors’ interest in banking stocks waned, especially there were selloffs on Nigerian big banks stocks over the period.

The increased bargain hunting activities pushed key performance indicators higher despite higher spot rates by the Central Bank of Nigeria at the Treasury bills primary market auction midweek.

Trading results indicate that the domestic equities market closed the week on a positive note as the All-Share Index rose 0.5 per cent week on week to settle at 47,569.04 points.

Accordingly, year to date return inched higher to 11.4 per cent from 10.9 per cent in the previous week while market capitalisation gained N118.53 billion to close the week at N25.9 trillion.

In its market note, Afrinvest stock traders said activity level diverged as average volume traded declined 16.2 per cent to 122.9 million units in the week while average value traded strengthened by 34.9 per cent to N3.0 billion.

The top traded stocks by volume were GTCO which transacted 121.5 million units, MBENEFIT did 47.7 million units, and 41.9 million units of FBNH were traded.

In terms of value traded, AIRTELAF did N2.4 billion followed closely by DANGCEM with N2.1 billion and GTCO N2.1 billion.

The Industrial Goods index led gainers, up 3.2 per cent week on week due to buying interest in BUACEMENT which gained 8.7 per cent.

Similarly, price uptick in UNITYBNK (+4.9%), JAIZBANK (+4.7%), WAPIC (+9.4%), and SOVRENINS (+7.7%) pushed the Banking and Insurance indices higher by 1.9 per cent and 1.7 per cent w/w respectively.

Conversely, the Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods indices lost 2.1 per cent and 0.7 per cent week on wee respectively due to selloffs in SEPLAT (-4.0%), OANDO (-0.4%), CADBURY (-6.9%), and INTBREW (-5.3%).