The Nigerian Exchange Limited sustained its bullish sentiments on Wednesday as it closed in the green zone with N305bn added to equity investors’ wealth.
Investors had gained N166bn on Tuesday after a loss of N259bn on Monday following dips in the value of some medium-cap stocks.
At the close of trading on Wednesday, the All-Share Index and the market capitalisation had risen by 0.78 per cent to 71,808.64 and N39.294tn respectively. Also, the year-to-date gains of the index rose to 40.11 per cent.
At the close of the day, the market recorded 34 gainers compared to 22 losers while the number of stocks traded during the day stood at 121.
This bullish trend in the market was particularly driven by share price appreciation of the top gainers for the day, amongst which are; Thomas Wyatt (9.93 per cent), FBN Holdings (9.91 per cent), Multiverse (9.90 per cent), Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (9.88 per cent) and Infinity Trust Mortgage Bank (9.70 per cent).
They include Axa Mansard Insurance, Guinea Insurance, Oando Plc, whose shares dipped by 9.69 per cent, 9.68 per cent, and 9.13 per cent losses respectively.
On sectorial performances, the trend was quite bearish as three out of the five sub-sector gauges tracked closed in the red zone. NGX Insurance, NGX Consumer Goods and NGX Industrial Goods indices suffered losses of 2.00 per cent, 0.11 per cent and 0.02 per cent respectively, while the Oil/Gas sector had a lull performance.
However, tier I banking stocks drove the Banking sector to a massive 5.01 per cent gain. The banking stocks, GTCO, United Bank for Africa, AccessCorp and Zenith Bank recorded the biggest volume and highest value for the day, thus contributing to the overall bullish market performance.
Trading activity remained positive as the total deals, volume and value rose by 19.90 per cent, 59.15 per cent and 8.88 per cent to 8,412 deals, 690.01 million units, valued at N12.10bn respectively.
GTCO emerged as the most actively traded security in terms of volume and value, with 76.70 million units, worth N3.04bn exchanged in 260 deals.
