Nigerian equity market halts decline; gains 0.1%

Nigerian equity market recorded its first appreciation this week, gaining 0.1 per cent on Wednesday on the back of uptick by GTBank, Stanbic, and Unilever.

The bourse, which had suffered three consecutive dips, saw the All-Share Index (ASI) rose 0.06 per cent to close at 23,704.44 points, while the market capitalization gained ₦7.1billion as the market to close at ₦12.4 trillion while year-to-date loss stood at -11.7 per cent.

The volume of equities investors traded was up by 2.3 per cent to 159.2 million units, while value traded declined 8.1 per cent to ₦1.5 billion.

The most active stocks by volume were FBNH (50.8m units), Access Bank (10.9m units) and UBA (9.8 million units), while FBNH (₦242.1 billion), Nigerian Breweries (₦219.7 billion) and Nestle (₦206.4bn) led the value chart.

The Oil & Gas index led gainers, appreciating 2.7 per cent, following bargain hunting in Mobil (9.9 per cent) and Total (6.8 per cent); the Insurance and Banking indices appreciated 1.9 per cent and 0.6 per cent respectively due to buying interest in MANSARD (8.2 per cent), WAPIC (7.1 per cent), GTBank (2.1 per cent) and Stanbic (2.6 per cent).

Also, Unilever which was up 10 per cent, drove the Consumer Goods index higher by 0.4 per cent, but the AFR-ICT index dipped by 0.8 per cent because of price decline in MTNN (-1.4 per cent).