Equities market opens February bullish as ASI adds 1.6%

On Thursday, the bulls returned to the local stock market as investors’ interest in BUA Foods and tier-1 banking stocks drove the benchmark index 1.63 per cent higher.

Recovering from the previous session’s loss, the domestic bourse posted gains as the All Share Index (ASI) index rose by 1.63 per cent to close at 102,802.25 basis points.

Accordingly, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns printed +1.6 per cent and +37.5 per cent, respectively.

In the same manner, the market capitalisation of listed equities gained a whopping sum of N901.78 billion, to reach N56.26 trillion.

As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was positive, as 52 tickers gained relative to 17 losers. On the performance board, Caverton Support Group and Champs recorded the most significant gains of the day having appreciated by 10.0 per cent respectively; while Deap Capital and CWG topped the losers’ list having dipped in share value by 9.9 per cent respectively.

Moving forward, performance across the sectors indicated broad-based gains as all of the five sub-sector indices tracked closed in the green territory. The Banking sector led the gainers with a 7.8 per cent increase, fueled by buy interest in the top banks such as Zenith Bank, Access Holdings, United Bank for Africa, Guaranty Trust Holding Company and Fidelity Bank.

The Consumer Goods sector followed suit with a substantial increase of 4.37 per cent, particularly driven by Dangote Sugar, Honeywell Flour, Cadbury and BUA Foods. The Insurance, Oil/Gas and Industrial indexes posted gains of 2.18 per cent, 0.02 per cent and 0.35 per cent, respectively.

Meanwhile, trading on the NGX witnessed a bearish turn as the total deals and value declined by 10.06 per cent and 45.96 per cent to 12,851 trades and N12.16 billion, respectively. The total traded volume for the day increased by 14.93 per cent to 861.01 million units.

As the session concluded, Universal Insurance took the spotlight as the most traded security in terms of volume with 113.76 million units changing hands in 110 deals, while Zenith Bank led in traded value at N2.76 billion.