Equities trading on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) begins the week on a positive note as the market indicators advance by 1.73 per cent on Monday.
The All-Share Index (ASI) notched a 1.7 per cent increase to close at 34,843.44 basis points on significant interest in the stocks of Airtel Africa, Dangote Cement and Wapco.
The market worth as well closed bullish as investors gained N309.78 billion to close the market capitalisation at N18.211 trillion.
Accordingly, Month-to-Date loss moderated to -0.6 per cent, while Year-to-Date gain increased to +29.8 per cent.
Market sentiment, as measured by market breadth, was positive, as 26 tickers gained, relative to 14 losers. Airtel Africa led the gainers’ list having notched ten per cent to close at N704 per share, while Royal Exchange followed closed with 9.5 per cent appreciation in share value to close at 23 kobo per each share.
Conversely, Prestige insurance and International Breweries recorded the largest losses of the day having declined by ten per cent and 9.9 per cent respectively.
However, the sectorial performance was bearish as three out of the five sub-sector gauges tracked closed in red; the NSE Banking, NSE Consumer Goods and NSE Oil/Gas indices dipped by 0.33 per cent, 0.93 per cent and 0.66 per cent respectively.
On the positive side, the NSE Insurance and NSE Industrial indices rose by 1.25 per cent and 1.51 per cent respectively.
Meanwhile, activity in the market was weak despite the bullish run as total deals, volume and value of stocks traded declined by 13.64 per cent, 73.86 per cent and 17.13 per cent to 4,154 deals, 0.20 billion units and N3.7 billion respectively.
– Nigerian Tribune