Equities Market: Bearish trend halted  as NGXASI advances by 0.13%

Nigeria’s Equities Market closed positive on Monday by 0.13% as the NGX-ASI increased to 99,665.05 from 99,539.75 recorded at the close of the previous trading day, indicating a YTD return of +33.29%

Market capitalization increased by N70.87 billion to N56,367.21 trillion from N56,296.34 trillion recorded at the close of the previous trading day, Also, the market turnover decreased to N5.301 billion from N5.399 billion.

But the market  had a negative market breadth.

At the end of the first weekday of trading, a total of 306,620,144 shares in 8,298 deals, corresponding to a market value of NGN 5,300,706,332.66, were traded. Compared with the previous NGX trading day (Friday, April 19), today’s data shows 19% improvement in volume, 2% decline in turnover, but 16% improvement in deals. The current market capitalization of the Nigerian Stock Exchange is NGN 56.4 trillion.

In the aggregate, 124 NGX listed equities participated in trading, ending with 16 gainers and 20 losers. Japaul Gold and Ventures led the gainers with 9.58% share price appreciation closing at NGN 1.83 per share, followed by Guaranty Trust Holding (+9.55%), FTN Cocoa Processors (+8.76%) and Universal Insurance Company (+8.57%).

On the losing side, Stanbic IBTC Holdings came out last with an end-of-day price depreciation of 10% at NGN 45.00 per share, followed by The Initiates (-10%), Prestige Assurance Company (-9.84%) and Omatek Ventures (-9.52%). Guaranty Trust Holding recorded the highest volume of 50.2 million traded shares, followed by Access Holdings (48.1m), United Bank for Africa (41.7m) and Universal Insurance Company (39.7m).

Regarding the performance of NGX market indices, the benchmark NGX All-Share Index (ASI) inched up 125.30 (0.13%) points to close at 99,665.05, representing a 1-week loss of 2.08%, a 4-week loss of 4.78%, but an overall year-to-date gain of 33.29%.

Other remarkable indices that performed were the NGX Top 30 Index (+0.23%; -1.99% 1WK; +32.48% YTD), NGX Banking Index (+1.27%; -6.77% 1WK; -10.96% YTD), NGX Pension Index (+0.95%; -2.88% 1WK; +8.01% YTD), NGX Insurance Index (+0.46%; -1.85% 1WK; +19.19% YTD), NGX Premium Index (+0.37%; -1.4% 1WK; +35.1% YTD), and NGX Industrial Index (+0.06%; -2.65% 1WK; +72.89% YTD).