By Dipo Olowookere
The local bourse got back to the green territory for the first time in seven days after Mobil Nigeria and other large cap stocks recorded significant gains on Thursday.
By the time trading activities were brought to an end yesterday, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) finished 0.33 percent higher, putting a halt to the six consecutive losses.
Also, the year-to-date returns expanded to 8.87 percent, while the market breadth closed positive with 29 price risers and 28 price fallers.
Mobil Nigeria was the biggest price gainer, appreciating by N7.70k to close at N184 per share, while GlaxoSmithKline increased by N2.25k to settle at N24.30k per share.
Nigerian Breweries improved by N1.90k to end at N127.90k per share, PZ Cussons grew by 60k to finish at N23 per share, and Cadbury Nigeria went up by 60k to close at N13.25k per share.
At the other side, Access Bank suffered the biggest loss after losing 65k of its share value to settle at N11.10k per share.
It was followed by Dangote Sugar, which depreciated by 30k to close at N20.50k per share, and Africa Prudential Registrars, which went down by 20k to end at N4.12k per share.
Honeywell Flour declined by 12k to close at N2.38k per share, while C&I Leasing deflated by 10k to finish at N1.90k per share.
Business Post reports that the market volume and value increased yesterday by 10.92 percent and 30.20 percent respectively.
A total of 542.4 million shares exchanged hands on Thursday in 5,039 deals worth N7.4 billion compared with the 489 million equities traded on Wednesday in 5,524 deals valued at N5.6 billion.
It was observed that these trades were dominated by stocks in the financial sector, trading a total of
473 million shares worth N6.6 billion, while equities in the Consumer Goods sector followed with 16.9 million shares sold for N582 million.
Access Bank sold the highest volume of shares yesterday with a total of 126 million units were traded for N1.4 billion.
Zenith Bank sold 67.3 million stocks worth N1.9 billion, while GTBank exchanged 51.8 million equities valued at N2.3 billion.
FBN Holdings traded 32.8 million shares worth N394.3 million, while UBA transacted 29.5 million equities for N342.3 million.
A look at the market indices yesterday showed that the All-Share Index (ASI) increased by 138.36 points to finish at 41,633.79 points, while the market capitalisation went up by N195.7 billion to settle at N15.040 trillion.
