The bulls maintained a dominant position in the equities market despite the nationwide unrest in the just concluded week. With gains in 3 out of the 5 trading days in the week, the All-Share Index (ASI) advanced by 13 bps w/w to 28,696.06 while market capitalization gained N19.2bn to settle at N14.99 trillion. This improves the year-to-date performance to +6.91%.
Market breadth, a measure of Investors’ sentiment declined from 1.8x to 0.8x as 28 stocks advanced while 35 stocks declined last week. INTBREW (+18.2 %), CUTIX (+17.3%) and NASCON (+10.0%) were the top gainers while NNFM (-9.9%), LINKASSURE (-9.1%) and ETERNA (-9.0%) top the losers’ chart.
Market activity level waned as the volume and value of transactions declined by 23.0% and 14.4% to 1.5 million units and N19.67bn respectively. Trading in the top three equities namely Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Access Bank Plc and United Bank for Africa Plc (measured by volume) accounted for 633.527 million shares worth N10.06 billion in 3,887 deals, contributing 42.08% and 50.87% to the total equity turnover volume and value respectively.
Our Outlook for the Week
We expect corporate earnings release to influence the mood of the market this week. This is expected to improve the market mood at the activity level while driving positive sentiments towards stocks with impressive third-quarter earnings.
