By Dipo Olowookere
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) closed its midweek trading session bullish, recording a 0.14 growth, which was boosted by stocks across most sectors tracked.
Business Post reports that apart from the industrial goods sector, which declined by 0.45 percent, every other sector appreciated, with the banking index rising by 1.79 percent, insurance index by 0.22 percent, consumer goods index by 1.27 percent and oil/gas index by 0.09 percent.
The gains recorded by stocks in these sectors buoyed the 36.71 points rise in the All-Share Index (ASI) on Wednesday to 26,776.15 points from 26,739.44 points and the N17.7 billion addition to the market capitalisation, to N12.924 trillion against N12.906 trillion it ended on Tuesday.
Despite the gains achieved by the market at the midweek session, the activity level was poor. The volume of shares transacted went down by 32.21 percent, while the value depreciated by 53.33 percent, with the number of deals going down by 7.51 percent.
A total of 267.3 million shares worth N3.1 billion exchanged hands in 4,074 deals on Wednesday compared with the 394.4 million equities valued at N6.5 billion traded in 4,405 deals on Tuesday.
Most of these trades were happened in the financial services sector, which accounted for 179.5 million shares traded for N1.7 billion, while the conglomerates sector followed with 128.6 million equities worth N838 million.
Access Bank sold 63.5 million shares worth N643.7 million, UBA exchanged 44.9 million units valued at N338.7 million, Zenith Bank traded 24.1 million equities for N451.6 million, FBN Holdings transacted 16.8 million shares worth N119.3 million, while GTBank sold 14.3 million stocks worth N414.1 million.
Business Post reports that the market breadth was positive yesterday with 24 price gainers led by Nigerian Breweries and 10 price losers led by MTN Nigeria.
Shares of Nigerian Breweries rose by N3 to finish at N52 per each, Conoil gained N1.60 to close at N18.50 per unit, UBA rose by 55 kobo to settle at N7.75 per share, FBN Holdings appreciated by 55 kobo to end at N7.30 per share, while Access Bank increased its value by 35 kobo to close at N10.20 per share.
On the losers’ side, MTN Nigeria dominated with a price depreciation of N2.85 to close at N119.05 per unit, while Dangote Cement followed with a decline of 90 kobo to settle at N144 per unit.
NASCON lost 85 kobo to finish at N14 per share, Lafarge Africa went down by 15 kobo to close at N14.50 per unit, while Oando depreciated by 6 kobo to trade at N3.54 per share.
Adedapo Adesanya