By Dipo Olowookere
One week after slipping into the N12 trillion mark, the market capitalisation has again returned to the N13 trillion psychological point at the close of trading activity on Friday.
Last Friday, the market cap of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) had ended at N13.071 trillion, but on Monday, it depreciated to N12.883 trillion.
It had been in that region since the beginning of the week despite the gains posted by the market since on Tuesday until the performance of the last weekday of trading pushed it back to N13 trillion mark after 0.44 percent growth.
Business Post reports that at the close of transactions on Friday, the total value of stocks on the nation’s stock market increased to N13.028 trillion from N12.970 trillion recorded on Thursday.
However, the All-Share Index (ASI) is still within the 26,000 territory at the close of business, but could shoot to 27,000 at the next trading session if the bullish run is sustained. The ASI grew by 119.33 points yesterday to finish at 26,991.42 points against 26,872.09 points it closed the previous day.
The gains printed at the trading session occurred despite the market breadth closing negative with 14 price gainers and 18 price losers from the 99 NSE listed stocks that participated in the day’s trading.
The biggest price gainer was Nestle Nigeria, which rose by N100 to settle at N1250 per share, while Okomu Oil followed with a price appreciation of N5 to finish at N55 per unit.
Forte Oil improved by N1.50 to end at N18.10 per share, CCNN garnered N1 to close at N19 per share, while Ikeja Hotel rose by 11 kobo to trade at N1.25 per unit.
On the losers’ side, Nigerian Breweries finished as the leader after going down by N1 to close at N50.50 per share, while Dangote Cement followed with a loss of 50 kobo to settle at N144.40 per share.
Dangote Sugar went down by 35 kobo to sell at N12.75 per unit, Access Bank and Lafarge Africa lost 10 kobo each to close at N10.05 per share and N14.30 per share respectively.
A total of 207.4 million shares worth N2.8 billion exchanged hands in 3,630 deals on Friday, compared with the 239.2 million equities worth N2.3 billion transacted in 3,585 deals on Thursday. This indicated that while the value of shares and number of deals improved by 24.51 percent and 1.26 percent respectively, the volume of shares traded by investors reduced by 13.30 percent.
Access Bank was the most traded equity by volume at the market yesterday, recording a turnover of 27.3 million shares worth N276.6 million, while Zenith Bank followed with 26.1 million units sold for N487.5 million.
Fidelity Bank exchanged 15.6 million equities worth N31.7 million, GTBank traded 15.6 million stocks valued at N460.1 million, while AIICO transacted 12.7 million shares worth N9.0 million.
