Business

Bulls persist at NGX as investors earn N270.3bn

Equities trading at the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) extended gains for the second consecutive session on Thursday, closing higher as the benchmark index gained 0.81 per cent to settle at 62,019.88 basis points.

Accordingly, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns printed +1.7 per cent and +21.0 per cent, respectively.

Specifically, industrial heavyweight, Dangote Cement as well as Zenith Bank and Stanbic were the major drivers of the market’s strong performance after the share value appreciated by 1.75 per cent, 1.32 per cent and 1.67 per cent, respectively.

Equities investors, therefore, earned N270.24 billion as the market capitalisation settled at N33.77 trillion by the end of the day’s trading activities.

As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was positive, as 54 tickers gained relative to 18 losers. Eterna and Union Bank of Nigeria recorded the highest gains of the day having appreciated in share value by 10.0 per cent, respectively, while Wapic Insurance and UPDC topped the losers’ list after their respective share value dipped by 9.6 per cent and 9.2 per cent.

Analysing by sectors, the Oil & Gas, Industrial Goods, and Consumer Goods indices recorded gains by 2.4 per cent, 0.9 per cent and 0.2 per cent, respectively; while the Banking and Insurance indices printed losses by 2.5 per cent and 0.6 per cent, respectively.

Activities at the local bourse on Thursday were impressive as analysis of market activities showed trade turnover settled higher relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions up by 821.84 per cent.

A total of 5.44 billion shares valued at N95.01 billion were exchanged in 9,948 deals. FBN Holdings led the volume and value charts with 4.69 billion units traded in deals worth N87.81 billion.

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