Hunt for High Dividend Yields Stocks to Dominate Trading This Week

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

The hunt for stocks of companies with potentially high dividend yields and have recorded increased earnings as at H1 2018 will dominate trading this new week.

This is according to analysts at Cowry Asset, which also foresee the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) closing in the positive region at the close of transactions this Friday.

Last week, the equities market recorded a week-on-week decline of 5.02 percent as prices fell across-the-board amid sustained sell pressure, especially by the Foreign Portfolio Investors.

All the sector gauges were down: NSE Banking index, NSE Insurance index, NSE Consumer Goods, NSE Oil/Gas Index and NSE Industrial Index dropped by 2.35 percent, 0.06 percent, 2.75 percent, 3.68 percent and 1.86 percent to close at 390.87 points, 130.51 points, 754.93 points, 282.46 points and 1,512.94 points respectively.

During the week, investors lost a total of N624.39 billion though the market turnover, traded volumes and total deals increased w-o-w by 40.19 percent, 7.64 percent and 8.26 percent respectively to N18.33 billion, 0.96 billion shares and 16,896 deals respectively.

Analysts at Business Post posit that during trading this week, both domestic institutional and retail investors will take advantage of the fallen prices to make another entry into the market.

However, we believe investors will still remain cautious of the political happenings in the country with the Osun governorship election in focus this Saturday as well as the National Assembly resumption fixed for next Tuesday.

Investors will specially want to keep an eye on the resumption of lawmakers next week to see if the rumoured plan to impeach the Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives because of their recent defections to the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) would still be raised during plenary.

Also, Business Post analysts expect investors to still ponder on the resignation of former Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, last Friday over her National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) certificate saga.

With the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, drafted by President Muhammadu Buhari to oversee the Ministry of Finance, investors will watch closely to see how she runs the economy of the country, which some said is silently bleeding.