Nigerian equity market gains 1.1% this week

The Nigerian equity market extended a bullish trend this week on Friday, buoyed by bellwether stocks such as DANGCEM, WAPCO, STANBIC and SEPLAT.
The NSE All-Share Index rose 1.1% w/w to settle at 39,156.28 points, while market capitalisation rose ₦224.2bn w/w to close at ₦20.4tn and the market loss this year moderated to -2.8%.
Trading activity was mixed as average volume fell 1.8% w/w to 289.1m units while value traded rose 34.9% w/w to ₦3.5bn. The top traded stocks by volume were ZENITH (79.3m units), STERLING (52.6m units) and FIDELITY (48.7m units) while NESTLE (₦2.1bn), ZENITH (₦1.8bn) and GUARANTY (₦1.0bn) topped trades by value.
The Industrial Goods index led gainers, up to 2.4% w/w due to buying interest in CUTIX (+23.6%), DANGCEM (+4.5%) and WAPCO (+2.9%). Similarly, the Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods indices advanced 1.4% and 1.1% w/w respectively following price appreciation in CONOIL (+9.6%), SEPLAT (+1.5%), PZ (+9.1%) and UNILEVER (+7.6%).
Gains in STANBIC (+6.1%) and UBN (+5.5%) buoyed the Banking index as it rose by 0.9% w/w.
On the other hand, the Insurance and AFR-ICT indices closed in the red, down 4.1% and 0.7% w/w respectively, on account of selloffs in NEM (-13.5%), WAPIC (-6.8%) and MTNN (-1.4%).
The top-performing stocks for the week were CUTIX (+23.6%), OKOMUOIL (+20.7%), and MORISON (+9.7%) while CWG (-26.1%), FTNCOCOA (-15.4%), and NEM (-13.5%) led laggards. In the coming week, we expect to see profit-taking in early trades.
Analysts in Afrinvest believe the uptrend will be short-lived before the end of next week on account of bargain hunting by investors.