Trading of equities continued on Wednesday with the All-Share index rising by 641.63 basis points or 0.56% to 114,659.11 basis points from yesterday’s 114,017.48 basis points.
Likewise, the market capitalization increased by 0.56% or N404 billion to settle at 72,302 trillion from Tuesday’s 71,898 trillion.
The day’s positive session is attributed to gains in DANGOTE CEMENT PLC (+4.5%), MTN NIGERIA COMMUNICATIONS PLC (+3.2%), OANDO PLC (+6.32%), FIDSON HEALTHCARE PLC(+9.91%), and BERGER PAINTS PLC (+9.98%).
These gains outweighed losses in NESTLE NIGERIA PLC (-5.69)%), VITAFOAM NIG PLC. (-6.64%), and INTERNATIONAL BREWERIES PLC. (-4.11%).
Thus, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns settled at +2.6% and +11.4%, respectively.
The volume of trades decreased by 27.81% to 471.15 million units of shares, value also dropped by 24.83% to 14.19 billion and The number of trades executed decreased by 14.35% as investors traded in 20,538 deals.
FCMB GROUP PLC. was the most traded stock by volume at 40.29 million units of share, while SEPLAT ENERGY PLC was the most traded stock by value at N1.62 billion.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was positive as 32 stocks gained in contrast to the 28 decliners where ASSOCIATED BUS COMPANY PLC, BETA GLASS PLC and BERGER PAINTS PLC were the top gainers with a 10.00%, 10.00% and 9.98% rise respectively.
Conversely, ABBEY MORTGAGE BANK PLC, NCR (NIGERIA) PLC, and VITAFOAM NIG PLC led the losers table with a -7.50%, -7.09% and -6.64% loss, respectively.
Sectoral performance was negative, as the Consumer Goods (-1.4%), Industrial Goods (-1.0%), Banking (-0.5%) and Insurance (-0.4%) indices declined while the Oil & Gas (+0.7%) index was the sole gainer of the day.
Victoria Ibanga