Business
Investors ignore poor economic report as Nigerian equity market maintains uptrend
Investors at the Nigerian equity market were unperturbed by the poor economic data for the second quarter of 2020 released by National Bureau of Statistics on Monday as the market continued its uptrend.
Nigerian economy contracted 6.2 per cent in the first six months of 2020 when to compared to the period from 1.8 per cent growth it achieved in Q1:2020, the worst quarterly performance on record based on the latest report published by the NBS.
The bourse rallied for the fifth consecutive trading sessions, gaining 0.03 per cent on the back of appreciation on some bellwether stocks like Zenith Bank, GTBank, Guinness and 13 others.
The All-Share Index (ASI) increased by 7.25 absolute points, representing a growth of 0.03 per cent to close at 25,229.12 points, while the Market Capitalization gained N3.78 billion, representing an increase of 0.03 per cent to close at N13.16 trillion.
UPL, Unity Bank and REGALINS topped the 16 gainers list, Transcorp, Royal Exchange and Jaiz Bank suffered the heaviest lost among the 16 stocks that shed value.
Investors were very active in the market the volume and value of equities traded were up 58.4 per cent and 34.6 per cent to 251.2 million units and ₦2.4billion respectively.
The most active stocks by volume were Transcorp with 75.1 million, Zenith Bank (45.6m units) and GTBank (12.9m units), while Zenith Bank (₦767.6m), Presco (₦588.2m) and GTBank (₦325.2m) led by value.
The Consumer Goods and Insurance indices gained by 0.7 per cent and 0.82 per cent, driven by gains UNILEVER and CORNERSTONE.
Meanwhile, the Industrial Goods and Banking sectors shed 0.1 per cent and 0.01 per cent respectively, dragged down by losses in WAPCO and UBA.
However, the AFR-ICT and Oil & Gas indices closed the session flat.
In the main time, the bourse loss eased to -6.0 per cent.
