Blue-chip stocks lift Nigerian equity market

Investors’ interest in blue-chip stocks such as Dangote Cement, Zenith Bank and UBA propelled the Nigerian equity market to a rally on Wednesday.

The NGX ASI overcame yesterday’s loss to gain 0.18% to close at 38,482.5 points, while the Capitalization rose by N36billion to stand at N20.058 trillion and the year-to-date loss reduced to -4.44.  The volume and value traded dropped by 42.9% and 49.5% to 156.9million units and ₦1.3 billion respectively, with 15 gainers and 20 losers.

UPL, REGALINS, VERITASKAP, CHIPLC, and ROYALEX led the top gainers’ chart in Wednesday’s session as the best-performing stocks, while CWG, IKEJA HOTEL, NASCON, JOHN HOLT, and LINKASSURE led the top loser’s chart.

The Insurance index led gainers, up 0.8% due to buying interest in WAPIC (+3.5%) and NEM (+2.4%).

Similarly, the Industrial Goods and Banking indices rose 0.5% and 0.02% respectively, following price appreciation in Dangote Cement (+1.4%) and Zenith Bank (+0.4%).

Conversely, the Consumer Goods, Oil & Gas and AFR-ICT indices fell 16bps, 5bps and 1bps respectively on the back of selloffs in Dangote Sugar (-0.3%), Oando(-0.7%) and CWG (-9.7%).