Banking Stocks drag equities market performance… NSE ASI down 12bps

The domestic bourse opened the trading week on a negative note following sell offs in Tier 1 banking stocks – GUARANTY (-1.1%) and ACCESS (-1.8%) as well as FBNH (-2.7%). Consequently, the NSE All Share Index shed 12bps to close at 40,425.07 points while YTD return declined to 5.7 per cent. Investors lost N17.2 billion in value as market capitalisation fell to N14.6 trillion. Similarly, activity level weakened as volume and value traded dipped 22.6 per cent and 54.6 per cent to 271.2 million units and N2.3 billion respectively. The top traded stocks by volume were AFRINSURE (90.0m), FIDELITY (21.9m) and DIAMOND (20.5m) while GUARANTY (N664.9m), ZENITH (N282.8m) and NESTLE (267.0m) were the top traded stocks by value.

Sector performance was largely bullish as 3 of 5 indices under our watch trended northwards. The Oil & Gas index advanced the most, appreciating 0.5% on account of buying interest in FORTE (+4.9%). Following closely were the Industrial Goods and Consumer Goods indices, inching 0.3 per cent and 0.1 per cent higher as a result of gains in WAPCO (+0.6%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+0.4%), UNILEVER (+1.0) and DANGSUGAR (+0.8%). On the other hand, the Insurance index topped losers chart, down 0.9 per cent, due to profit taking in NEM (-4.9%) and AIICO (-8.8%) while the Banking index fell 0.2 per cent on the back of sell pressures in GUARANTY (-1.1%) and ACCESS (-1.8%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) improved to 1.2x from 0.7x recorded the prior trading session as 26 stocks advanced compared to 22 stocks that declined. Today’s top performing stocks were UNITY (+8.5%), HMARKINS (+7.4%) and LASACO (+5.1%) while NEM (-4.9%), CUSTODIAN (-4.8%) and STERLING (-4.7%) were the worst performing stocks. Despite today’s negative performance, we anticipate a rebound in the near term. We expect investors to react positively to the Q1:2018 GDP released earlier today as well as existing cheap valuations in the market.

Market Statistics Monday, 21st May 2018

Market Cap (N’bn)                                14,643.2

Market Cap (US$’bn)                                   47.8

NSE All-Share Index                             40,425.07

Daily Performance %                                    (0.1)

Week Performance %                                   (0.6)

YTD Performance %                                       5.7

Daily Volume (Million)                                 271.3

Daily Value (N’bn)                                           2.3

Daily Value (US$’m)                                       7.5