Nigeria equities market opens the week on a bullish note… ASI up 51bps  

In today’s trading session, the local bourse advanced 51bps to settle at 32,201.9 points on account of buy interests in market bellwethers – NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+2.7%), NESTLE (+1.4%) and FBNH (+2.0%). As a result, market capitalisation rose by N59.9 billion to N11.8 trillion while YTD loss improved to – 15.7 per cent. However, activity level weakened as volume and value traded shed 9.8 per cent and 35.6 per cent to 148.1million units and N1.8 billion respectively. The top traded stocks by volume were OANDO (30.3m units), DIAMOND (16.4m units) and UBA (12.9m units) while NESTLE (N408.8m), GUARANTY (N338.6bn) and OANDO (N154.2bn) were the top traded stocks by value.

Performance across sectors was largely bullish as 3 of 5 indices under our coverage trended northwards. The Consumer Goods index advanced the most, up 1.4 per cent following bargain hunting in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+2.7%), NESTLE (+1.4%) and FLOURMILL (+4.7%) while the Insurance and Banking indices trailed, appreciating by 0.8% and 0.4% respectively as a result of gains in CONTINSURE (+6.4 %), PRESTIGE (+8.9%), FBNH (+2.0%) and ETI (+1.6%). On the flip side, the Oil & Gas index fell by 0.7% on the back of sell offs in FORTE (-7.8%) while the Industrial Goods index closed flat despite gains in FIRSTALU (+3.2%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) significantly improved to 5.2x from 0.7x recorded last Friday as 26 stocks appreciated against 5 decliners. GLAXOSMITH (+10.0%), UACPROP (+9.7%) and NPFMCRFB (+9.6%) were the best performing stocks while the worst performing stocks were UNIONDAC (-8.0%), MBENEFIT (-8.0%) and FORTE (-8.0%). Although today’s bullish performance was largely on account of investor bargain hunting as well as a noticeable stronger investor sentiment, we expect performance this week to follow an undulating trend while maintaining our bearish outlook on the market.

Market Statistics Monday, 19th November 2018

Market Cap (N’bn)                                           11,763.6

Market Cap (US$’bn)                                             38.4

NSE All-Share Index                                       32,222.24

Daily Performance %                                               0.5

Week Performance %                                              0.2

YTD Performance %                                             (15.7)

Daily Volume (Million)                                           148.1

Daily Value (N’bn)                                                     1.8

Daily Value (US$’m)                                                  5.9