NSE: Banking Stocks Lead Market Recovery with 1.60% Surge

By Dipo Olowookere

For the first time in 12 successive trading sessions, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) finished in the green territory on Monday, June 4, 2018, putting a halt to the 11th consecutive losing streak at the market, which started last month.

The equity market closed 0.37 percent higher yesterday despite year-to-date returns remaining in the danger zone at -3.38 percent.

Business Post reports that positive sentiment prevailed on the stock market on Monday as a result of bargain hunting embarked upon by investors, who bought shares that had lost a significant amount of value during the bear days, but have good prospects of yielding good returns later, especially stocks in the banking space and those in the oil and gas sector. However, profit-taking activities were still observed at the Consumer Goods industry.

At the close of transactions on Monday, the All-Share Index (ASI) rose by 134.69 points to settle at 36,950.98 points, while the market capitalization increased by N49 billion to finish at N13.385 trillion.

Also, the banking index finished 1.60 percent higher, while the oil and gas index went up by 0.33 percent. However, the insurance sector depreciated by 0.89 percent, while the industrial industry lost 1.12 percent, and the Consumer Goods space slightly went down by 0.02 percent.

The market breadth ended yesterday at equilibrium with 21 price gainers and losers each with Nigerian Breweries’ shares growing by N3 to close at N106 per share.

GTBank followed with N1.75k added to its share value to finish at N40.40k per share, while Mobil Oil Nigeria went up by N1.50k to settle at N166 per share.

Furthermore, Zenith Bank increased by 50k to close at N26 per share, while FBN Holdings rose by 35k to end at N10.50k per share.

Conversely, Presco led the losers’ chart after losing N3.75k of its share price at the market yesterday to finish at N71.25k per share.

It was trailed by International Breweries, which went down by N1.20k to end at N39 per share and PZ Cussons, which depreciated by N1.05k to settle at N20.80k per share.

Cadbury Nigeria fell by N1 on Monday to close at N11.50k per share, while Flour Mills of Nigeria also decreased by N1 to finish at N30.10k per share.

The volume and value of equities traded on the floor of the NSE yesterday depreciated by 39.16 percent and 2.26 percent respectively with GTBank, Sovereign Trust Insurance, FBN Holdings, Diamond Bank and Zenith Bank leading the activity chart by volume.

Business Post reports that the Financial Services sector led the activity chart with 259.3 million shares exchanged for N3.7 billion, while the Consumer Goods sector followed with 25.5 million equities sold for N2.4 billion.

At the end of the day, a total of 314.4 million shares worth N7 billion exchanged hands on Monday in 6,016 deals in contrast to the 516.8 million equities transacted last Friday valued at N7.2 billion.