Kehinde Akinseinde-Jayeoba
At the Nigerian Exchange Limited on Monday, equities trading was bullish, having rebounded after the previous sessions’ pullback as the benchmark Index gained 0.78 per cent to close at 54,224.35 basis points.
Specifically, renewed interest in telco heavyweight, Airtel Africa pushed the broader index into positive territory having appreciated share value by 3.85 per cent.
Consequently, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date return printed +1.9 per cent and +5.8 per cent, respectively.
Equities investors, therefore, earned N228.7bn in their overall investment as the market capitalisation settled at N29.54 trillion at the end of the first trading activities for the week.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative, as 15 tickers lost relative to 14 gainers.
On the performance board, Capital Hotel and Vitafoam recorded the highest losses of the day after their respective share prices dipped by 9.4 per cent and 7.2 per cent, while Conoil and CWG (+9.9%) topped the gainers’ list as their share prices appreciated respectively by 9.9 per cent.
Given the renewed bullish sentiment, performance across sub-sector gauges was largely positive except for the NGX Industrial Index, which fell by 0.05 per cent.
The NGX Banking, NGX Insurance, NGX Consumer Goods, and NGX Oil/Gas indices rose by 0.18 per cent, 0.13 per cent, 0.02 per cent, and 0.86 per cent, respectively.
In the broader market, the NGX Premium decreased marginally by two basis points while the NGX-30 index increased by 75 basis points.
Analysis of market activities showed trade turnover settled higher relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions up by 46.21 per cent.
A total of 154.63 million shares valued at N5.51 billion were exchanged in 3,095 deals. Guaranty Trust Holding Company led the volume chart with 36.68 million units traded while Airtel Africa led the value chart in deals worth N2.94 billion.
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