By Modupe Gbadeyanka
For the first this week, the stock market in Nigeria closed in the green zone for two consecutive days after reversing its downward trends that started last weekend.
At the end of trading activities on Thursday, capital market indicators moved in the positive direction, though the volume of shares exchanged today finished lower than what was sold the previous day.
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) all-share index improved by 111.39 points or 0.43 percent to close at 27,236.78 points compared to the 21.87 points or 0.08 percent it added on Wednesday, closing at 27,120.39 points.
Likewise, the market capitalisation grew by N40 billion to close at N9.36 trillion against N9.315 trillion it achieved the previous day after going up by N7.5 billion.
Eighteen stocks recorded losses today at the capital market, while 12 remained unchanged and 15 shares appreciated in value.
Total led the gainers’ table on Thursday with an appreciation of N29.72k to close at N319.72k per share, Larfage Cement Plc went up N4.11k to finish at N48.62k per share, Unilever improved by N1.99k to close at N50 per share, Cadbury got better by N1.12k to end at N13 per share and Okomu Oil gained 99k to close at N41 per share.
In the opposite, Seplat topped the losers’ chart after it lost N15 to finish at N375 per share, Forte Oil shed N6.5k to close at N117.45k per share, Flour Mill fell by 19k to end at N19.31k per share, UAC Property declined by 17k to close by N3.24k per share and Eterna dropped 14k to finish at N2.81k per share.
Investors staked N1.76 billion on 155.6 million shares today in 2,648 deals compared to 1.74 billion spent on 159.99 million shares in 2,396 deals yesterday at the stock market.