Nigerian equity market sustains uptrend to seventh consecutive trading day

GTBank, FBNH, GUINNESS, and 21 other stocks spurred the Nigerian equity market to its seventh consecutive trading day rally on Wednesday.

The All-Share Index (ASI) increased by 38.37 absolute points, representing a.15 per cent rise to close at 25,330.10 points, while investors gained ₦20.0billion as market capitalisation advanced to ₦13.2trillion,  moderating the year to date loss to -5.6 per cent.

While volume traded dipped 28.1 per cent to 180.7million units, value traded was up 16.0 per cent to ₦1.4billion.

The top traded stocks by volume were FIDELITY (26.6m units), UBA (19.5m units) and ACCESS (19.0m units) while NESTLE (₦198.1m), ZENITH (₦172.8m) and GUARANTY (₦159.5m) led by value.

The top gainers were FTNCOCOA (+10.0 per cent), NNFM (+9.8 per cent) and UPL (+9.6 per cent), while CORNERSTONE (-9.7 per cent), AFRIPRUD (-6.7 per cent) and WAPIC (-2.9 per cent) lost the most.

Analysts at Afrinvest expected that following a six-day consecutive uptrend, there would be some profit-taking in subsequent trading days.

The Consumer Goods sector was the lone gainer, up 0.16 per cent due to buying interest in PZ (+5.0 per cent), CHAMPION (+7.1 per cent) and GUINNESS (+1.3 per cent).

However, the Insurance and Banking sectors shed 0.92 per cent and 0.03 per cent respectively, driven by price depreciation in UBA (-1.5 per cent), CORNERSTONE (-9.7 per cent) and CUSTODIAN (-2.0 per cent).

The Oil & Gas, Industrial Goods and AFR-ICT indices closed flat.