Equity market gains N265bn on investors’ buying interest

The equity market on Thursday continued its positive trends with investors’ net worth appreciating by N265 billion on bargain hunting.

The positive performance was due to investors’ buy interest in the stocks of Tier-one banks.

The market capitalisation rose by N265 billion or 0.62 percent to close at N42.694 trillion, as against N42.429 trillion recorded on Wednesday.

Consequently, the benchmark of the All-Share Index rose by 0.62 percent or 482.97 points to close at 78,020.54 as against 77,537.57 recorded previous session.

The Year-to-Date (YTD) return rose to 4.34 percent, as the value of transactions grew by 4.40 percent.

Meanwhile, a total of 984.19 million shares valued at N11.16 billion were exchanged in 12,976 deals.

Accordingly, market breadth closed positive, as activities indicated that trade turnover settled higher relative to the previous session.

Investors buying interest in Tier-one banks namely, Zenith bank, Guaranty Trust Company and Dangote Sugar was responsible for the improved performance.

However, FCMB led the volume chart with 106.81 million units traded while Fidelity Bank led the value chart with deals worth N1.31 billion.

On the gainer’s table, Wema Bank and LearnAfrica led in percentage terms of 10 percent each to close at N6.71 and N3.19 per share, respectively.

Transcorp followed with a gain of 9.93 percent to close at N11.51 per share.

Ikeja Hotel also gained 9.92 percent to close at N7.58, while Sterling Nigeria increased by 9.83 percent to close at N5.25 per share.

On the looser’s table, Multiverse Mining and Exploration led with a loss of 9.97 per cent to close at N20.22 per share.

It is followed by Meyer which lost 9.75 percent to close at N3.24 per share.

TrippleG depreciated by 9.30 percent to close at N1.95, while Johnholt lost 8.62 percent to close at N2.12 per share.

Also, ABC Transport was down by 8.25 per cent to close at 89k per share.