On Wednesday, the domestic equities market recorded its third consecutive gain driven by sustained bargain hunting in Dangote Cement, which appreciated its share value by 9.9 percent. Consequently, the All Share Index of the Nigerian Exchange Limited advanced by 2.38 percent to close at 90,063.27 basis points, and the Year-to-Date gain increased to +20.5 percent. With sustained bullish trends, equities investors earned N1.14 trillion on Wednesday as the market capitalization settled at N49.28 trillion.
Measured by market breadth, sentiment was positive with 45 tickers gaining relative to 35 losers. On the performance board, AIICO Insurance and Wema Bank recorded the highest gains of the day, with their respective share prices appreciating by 10.0 percent, while RTBriscoe and Dangote Sugar topped the losers’ list, having lost 10.0 percent, respectively.
Across the sectors, performance remained relatively positive among the sub-sector gauges tracked, with the exception of the Banking sector, which was the only laggard, declining by 3.26 percent. However, the Insurance, Consumer Goods, Oil/Gas, and Industrial Goods indexes recorded gains of 3.63 percent, 1.92 percent, 0.45 percent, and 8.76 percent, respectively.
Meanwhile, market activity showed further improvement with total deals, volume, and value increasing by 17.77 percent, 19.25 percent, and 2.08 percent to 17,471 trades, 1.29 billion units, and N16.38 billion, respectively.
At the close of the trading session, Sterling Financial Holdings was the most traded security in terms of volume with 106.14 million units worth N800.26 million across 838 trades, while Nigerian Breweries led in traded value at N2.02 billion.
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