Buying Interest in bluechips drive gains in Nigerian Equities Market

The bearish trend in the local bourse halted in today’s trading session as the All-Share Index (ASI) rose 0.1% to settle at 26,397.94 points due to buying interest in DANGCEM (+1.6%), UBA (+2.6%) and FBNH (+1.9%). Thus, market capitalisation increased by N15.6bn to settle at N12.9tn while YTD return moderated to -16.0%.  However, volume and value traded declined by 58.1% and 64.5% to 290.0m units and N2.8bn respectively. The top traded stocks by volume were UAC-PROP (30.3m units), ZENITH (26.8m units) and GUARANTY (18.1m units) while NESTLE (N1.1bn), GUARANTY (N475.0m) and ZENITH (N460.9m) were the top traded stocks by value. 

Performance across sectors was largely bearish as 4 of 6 indices under our coverage closed negative save the Consumer Goods and AFR-ICT indices which closed flat. The Banking and Insurance indices led the laggards, depreciating 0.8% and 0.6% respectively, following profit-taking in ACCESS (-3.4%), ZENITH (-1.5%), NEM (-2.9%) and LASACO (-7.1%). Similarly, the Oil & Gas and Industrial Goods indices declined 0.3% and 0.1% respectively on the back of losses in OANDO (-2.9%) and WAPCO (-3.0%). 

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) weakened to 0.6x from 1.0x recorded yesterday as 7 stocks appreciated against 11 decliners. UAC-PROP (+9.0%), AGLEVENT (+7.7%) and UBA (+2.6%) were the top outperforming stocks while UNIONDAC (-8.3%), LASACO (-7.1%) and JAIZBANK (-6.2%) led the laggards. Notwithstanding today’s positive performance, we maintain our bearish outlook on the market, although we expect third quarter earnings to guide investors sentiment.