Modupe Gbadeyanka
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Last week, activities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) ended negative despite expectations of aggressive buying of fundamentally sound stocks trading at low prices.
The equities market lost 0.19 percent week-on-week as investors await fresh policy direction of the present government for its second term.
As we begin a new trading week today, analysts are of the view that the market will move north as few listed companies begin to release their earnings for the first quarter of 2019.
“In the new week, we expect the Nigerian equities market to close in positive territory as the early-birds companies release their Q1 2019 financial results, which is expected to be fairly positive.
“Hence, we feel investors would take advantage of the low share prices to raise the local bourse upwards,” market observers at Cowry Asset said.
Corroborating this view was United Capital Research, which said, “Looking into the new week, we expect bargain hunters looking to take advantage of cheaply priced stocks to guide sentiments in the near term as RSI hovers below its oversold region.”
However, analysts at Afrinvest share a different opinion from their counterparts at Cowry Asset and United Capital Research.
“Next week, we expect to see profit-taking activities in some bellwether stocks, which would pressure market return for the week,” Afrinvest said.
On its part, Vetiva Capital Research said, “We foresee the index gaining at the beginning of this week in the absence of unforeseen events. We also expect market activity to remain low to average as market players remain cautious.”
For analysts at Business Post, “We foresee a further tussle for dominance between the bears and bulls at the market this week.
“We maintained that the low prices of stocks at the market at the moment give investors the opportunity to keep adding to their portfolios.”
