Sustained positive sentiments on the Nigerian Exchange Limited resulted in significant buy interests in banking stocks on Tuesday and saw the market capitalisation gaining N1.5tn to cross the historic N45tn mark.
It was observed that the Banking index led the gainers with an 8.16 per cent increase, driven by positive movements in the prices of First Bank of Nigeria Holding, Wema Bank, Zenith Bank Plc, FCMB Group, Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc, United Bank for Africa and Access Holdings Plc.
The Insurance and Consumer Goods indexes followed suit with gains of 6.37 per cent and 3.98 per cent, respectively, attributed to buying interest in Cadbury Plc, Unilever, AIICO and Guinea Insurance Plc. The industrial sector also recorded gains of 2.53 per cent, while, the Oil/Gas sector was the only laggard as it declined by 2.35 per cent at the close of trading.
At the close of Tuesday’s trade, the local bourse All-Share Index had advanced by 3.56 per cent to close at 83,191.84 points. The rally in the market has seen the year-to-date gain of the NGX ASI climb to 11.26 per cent.
The number of gainers rose to 72 stocks compared to 13 losers. Stocks such as Cadbury Plc, FBNH, FTN Cocoa, Guinea Insurance Plc, Mutual Benefits Assurance Plc, Unilever Plc, and Universal Insurance recorded gains of 10 per cent each to close at N18.15, N28.60, N2.20, N0.44, N0.77, N18.15 and N0.33 respectively.
The losers chart was led by TotalEnergies Marketing Nigeria Plc, which lost 10 per cent to close at N346.5 per unit, Daar Communications remained on the losers table with a 9.40 per cent depreciation in its share value to close at N1.06, RT Briscoe lost 8.45 per cent to close at N0.65, Sunu Assurance lost 7.69 per cent to close at N1.20 and Prestige shed 7.41 per cent to close at N0.50 per unit.
Trading activities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange reflected the prevailing positive trend, evidenced by a 6.61 per cent increase in total deals (17,144 trades), followed by an 18.46 per cent rise in traded volume (1.41 billion units), and a 61.77 per cent surge in the total traded value, which stood at N24.68bn.
At the close of the trading session, Fidelity Bank emerged as the most traded stock by volume, with 141.75 million units traded in 989 trades, while UBA led in traded value at N3.78 billion.
Recall that UBA joined the elite league of banks worth N1tn in market cap on Monday. Access Bank and FBNH hit the milestone on Tuesday as their market cap stood at N1.055tn and N1.026tn, respectively.
