Dangote Cement, MTNN halt Nigerian equity market’s downtrend

Investors’ interest in Dangote Cement, MTNN and 23 other stocks reversed the previous downtrend of the Nigerian Exchange on Thursday.

The bourse benchmark index gained 1.2 4% to close the 3 9,261.6 1 points, while the market capitalization gained N251.2 8billion to N2 0.5 4trillion, moderating the YTD loss to 2.5 1%.

The total volume of equities traded declined by 1 4.05% to 223 million units, and the total value dipped by 9.66% to N1.72billion.

FBNH (51.52million units), TRANSCORP (42.4 7million units) and EKOCORP (20.00million units) were the most traded stocks, while FBNH (₦359.8 3mn), Dangote Cement (₦313.62million) and Zenith Bank (₦217.31million) led by value.

The Bank and Consumer Goods sectors declined by 1.52% and 0.22% respectively on the back of losses in Honey Flour (-3.7 6%), GTBank (-3.06%), Dangote Sugar (-2.30%), Access Bank (-2.04%) and ETI (-1.87%).

Buying interest in Dangote Cement (+7.8 4%), made the Industrial Goods sector top the gainers’ chart, up by 7.3 6%.

The Healthcare and Agriculture sectors gained 4.19% and 2.93% due to price appreciation in FIDSON (+10.0 0%), FTNCOCOA (+8.33%) and OKOMUOIL (+5.26%).

Gains in NAHCO (+4.1 7%), MTNN (+3.94%) and TRANSCORP (+3.33%) drove the ICT (+1.9 6%) and Services (+0.26%) indices higher.

The top gainers were FIDSON (+10.00%), JBERGER ( +1 0.00%) , EKOCORP ( +9.26%) , CHIPLC ( +9.09%) and ROYALEX ( +8.89%) while CWG (-9.84%) , MBENEFIT (-7.50%) , FBNH (-6.7 6%), WAPIC (-3.85%) and Honey Flour (-3.7 6%) lost the most.