Nigerian Exchange up 1.4% this week

The Nigerian Exchange sustained gains on four trading days as the benchmark index rose 1.4% this week to 41,438.15 points due to strong buying interest in FBNH, GTCO, and WAPCO.

The market capitalisation gained ₦329.0billion this week to ₦21.6 trillion and the year-to-date return improved to 2.9%.

Trading activity strengthened as average volume and value traded rose 66.3% and 119.9% w/w to 567.7m units and ₦6.3bn respectively. Leading the most traded stocks by volume were FBNH (1.1bn units), GTCO (118.2m units), and ETI (107.7m units) while FBNH (₦12.3bn), SEPLAT (₦1.1bn), and ZENITH (₦810.6m) led trades by value.

Performance across the sectors within our coverage was largely bullish as all indices gained, save the AFR-ICT index which closed flat. Similar to last week’s trend, the Banking index led the gainers with a 2.6% w/w gain due to buying interest in FBNH (+29.6%), ETI (+9.5%), and GTCO (+3.5%).

In the same vein, the Insurance and Industrial Goods indices rose 1.6% and 1.0% w/w respectively following price appreciation in ROYALEX (+12.3%), CUSTODIAN (+9.0%) and WAPCO (+3.2%).

Furthermore, the Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods indices advanced 0.6% and 0.5% w/w respectively on the back of price uptick in SEPLAT (+1.4%), INTBREW (+9.9%), and CADBURY (+6.3%).

Investor sentiment strengthened this week, as market breadth (advance/decline ratio) doubled w/w to 3.2x as 41 stocks gained while 13 lost. The top outperformers for the week were CHAMPION (+49.5%), FBNH (+29.6%), and ROYALEX (+12.3%) while LEARNAFR (-18.7%), IKEJAHOT (-7.9%), and ABCTRANS (-5.9%) led the laggards.