The domestic equities market halted the 3-day bearish run buoyed by bargain hunting in ACCESS, INTBREW, and UBN at the end of today’s trading. Accordingly, the NGX-ASI rose 0.2% to close at 47,157.23 points, YTD return advanced to 10.4% from 10.2%, while market capitalisation gained ₦53.9bn to ₦25.4tn. Volume traded rose 24.8% to 297.2m units while value traded fell 7.7% to ₦4.7bn.
Across our coverage sectors, performance was bullish as all indices gained save the AFR-ICT index which closed flat. The Banking index led the gainers chart, up 1.7% driven by bargain hunting in UBN (+6.8%) and ACCESS (+2.9%). Trailing, the Consumer Goods and Insurance indices rose 0.7% and 0.2% respectively on account of buying interest in INTBREW (+5.0%), FLOURMILL (+4.3%), NEM (+7.3%), and MBENEFIT (+4.0%). Similarly, the Oil & Gas and Industrial Goods indices gained 0.1% and 3bps respectively on the back of price appreciation in OANDO (+0.6%) and WAPCO (+0.4%). Investor sentiment, as measured by market breadth, strengthened to 0.2x from -0.1x recorded in the previous session as 27 stocks gained, 14 lost while 118 were unchanged. In the next trading session, we expect the improved sentiment to sustain positive performance.
