Bellwether stocks lift Nigerian equity market to fifth consecutive gains

The Nigerian equity market extended its uptrend to five consecutive trading days on the back of gains by some bellwether stocks like MTNN, GTBank, Zenith Bank, and 17 others.

The All-Share Index (ASI) increased by 48.30 absolute points, representing a 0.19 per cent growth to close at 24,930.34 points, while the Market Capitalization gained N25.20 billion, ticking up by 0.19 per cent to close at N13.01 trillion.

SEPLAT led 19 other gainers, having added 9.03 per cent, while Union Bank shed 7.41 per cent to top nine of other losers.

The volume and value of stocks investors traded dipped 5 4.7 per cent and 4 5.2 per cent to 173.7 million units and ₦2.1 billion respectively.

The top traded stocks by volume were FBNH (2 9.8m units), GUARANTY (1 3.2m units) and CUSTODIAN (1 2.8m units) while MTNN (₦636.6m), GUARANTY (₦312.6m) and STANBIC (₦158.7m) led by value.

The Oil & Gas and Healthcare indices were the top gainers, up by 5.8 8 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively, due to buy interest in SEPLAT, FIDSON, ETERNA  and GLAXOSMITH.

Gains in STANBIC, NAHCO and ZENITH BANK drove the Banking (+1.2 6%) and Services (+0.5 1%) indices higher.

 In addition, the ICT and Consumer Goods indices closed higher by 27bps and 9bps respectively on the back of gains in NASCON,  GUINNESS, and MTNN.

Meanwhile, the Agriculture and Industrial Goods indices were flat.