By Dipo Olowookere
The positive momentum on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) continued on Tuesday despite having more sellers than buyers at the market.
Business Post reports that despite this, the market breadth closed negative yesterday with 18 price losers and 13 price gainers, indicating that the advance/decline ratio weakened by 0.7x.
It was observed the 0.08 percent appreciation posted by the NSE on Tuesday was buoyed by the gains recorded by MTN Nigeria during the trading session.
At the close of transactions yesterday, the All-Share Index (ASI) increased marginally by 21.65 points to finish at 27,586.79 points, while the market capitalization was jerked up by N10.5 billion to N13.421 trillion.
On the price movement chart, MTN Nigeria claimed the top position with a price appreciation of N1.50k to settle at N140 per share, with International Breweries claiming the second spot after gaining N1 to close at N11 per unit.
Ecobank rose by 40 kobo to finish at N7.70k per unit, UBA chalked up 20 kobo to trade at N6.40k per share, while Access Bank also improved its share value by 20 kobo to end at N6.70k per share.
On the flip side, Nestle Nigeria on Tuesday ended its positive run for some days now with a price depreciation of N19, emerging as the heaviest price loser to close at N1300 per unit.
Dangote Flour went down by 95 kobo to finish at N20.05k per share, Union Bank dropped 40 kobo to settle at N6.60k per share, Sterling Bank declined by 20 kobo to end at N2.30k per share, while Flour Mills shed 20 kobo to trade at N13.50k per share.
A look of the sectoral performance indicated that only the industrial and insurance posted gains, growing by 0.08 percent and 1.79 percent respectively.
Business Post reports that the banking index fell by 0.34 percent, the consumer goods by 0.36 percent and the energy sector by 0.18 percent.
The activity chart looked strong on Tuesday with the volume of shares traded by investors rising by 172.08 percent, the value of transacted equities increasing by 136.36 percent and the number of deals executed improving by 10.06 percent.
At the close of business yesterday, investors traded 294.4 million shares worth N3.5 billion in 3,337 deals compared with the 108.2 million equities worth N1.5 billion transacted in the previous session in 3,032 deals.
A further analysis showed that shares of UAC Property were the most traded during the session, accounting for 61.7 million units worth N50.6 million.
Access Bank exchanged 55.1 million equities worth N369.4 million, GTBank traded 52.0 million units of its stocks for N1.4 billion, Transcorp exchanged 26.5 million shares for N27.0 million, while UAC Nigeria traded 15.7 million equities valued at N74.2 million.
