Thursday’s trading of equities on the floor of the Nigerian Exchange Limited, NGX ended positive with the benchmark index growing 156.04 basis points or 0.22% to close at 72,455.83 basis points from Wednesday’s 72,299.79 basis points.
Similarly, the market capitalization gained 0.22% or ₦85.39bn to close at ₦39.649trn from ₦39.564trn.
Accordingly, the fourth consecutive gains for this week saw the Month-to-Date (MTD) and Year-to-Date (YTD) returns rise +1.5% and +41.4%, respectively.
Buying interest in DANGOTE SUGAR REFINERY PLC (+0.61%), ZENITH BANK PLC (+1.92%) ACCESS HOLDINGS PLC (+3.4%), and UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA PLC (+2.50%) offset losses in ECOBANK TRANSNATIONAL INCORPORATED (-0.44%), NIGERIAN BREW. PLC (-1.75%) and INTERNATIONAL BREWERIES PLC. (-1.11%).
Analysis of today’s market activities showed that the value of transactions went down by 10.16%, while the total traded volume increased by 3.1%.
A total of 446.58 million units of shares valued at ₦7.26bn were exchanged in 6,845 deals where ACCESS HOLDINGS PLC led both the volume and value chart with 77.25m units traded in deals worth ₦1.76bn.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was marginally negative with 27 stocks declining as against the 26 gainers.
INFINITY TRUST MORTGAGE BANK PLC (+9.83%) and JOHN HOLT PLC (+9.73%) topped the gainers’ list, while R T BRISCOE PLC (-9.84%) and UPDC REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT TRUST (-9.78%) recorded the highest losses of the day.
On sectoral performance, the Banking (+1.9%) index advanced while the Insurance (-1.9%) index declined. Conversely, the Industrial Goods, Consumer Goods and Oil & Gas indices closed flat.
Olusola Akintonde
