At the end of yesterday’s trading session, the Nigerian equities market closed positive as the benchmark index improved by 0.99% to close at 42,435.16 points.
This was mainly due to buy pressures in bellwether stocks such as SEPLAT (+2.46%) and MTNN (+4.29%). Consequently, the YTD return improved to 5.37% as market capitalisation increased by 217.19 billion to close at ₦22.14 trillion.
The sectoral performance totally strengthened as all the five indices under coverage improved. The Banking index, the biggest gainer, improved by 1.83% on UBA (+5.30%). The Oil & Gas, Consumer Goods, Insurance and Industrial indices followed suit, rising by 1.14%, 0.64%, 0.62% and 0.10% on SEPLAT (+2.46%), DANGSUGAR (+6.67%), MANSARD (+7.25%) and WAPCO (+2.14%) respectively.
Investor sentiment strengthened at the end of today’s trading session, as market breadth increased to 1.82x from 1.05x. This was illustrated by the advance of 20 stocks, led by LIVINGTRUST (+9.09%) and MEYER (+7.69%) and the decline of 11 stocks, led by CUTIX (-9.69%) and ROYALEX (-8.06%). Activity level strengthened as the total volume and value improved by 1.61% and 8.71% respectively as investors exchanged about 649.77 million units of shares worth over ₦7.23 billion.
We expect bullish momentum to persist in the next trading session as the equities market still presents decent opportunities for investors chasing positive real return on investments.
Fixed Income
There was relatively bearish sentiment across the bond yield curve as 2 of the 4 bond yields under coverage closed higher, the yield on FGN-APR-2023 closed lower by 1bp while the FGN-APR-2024 bond paper closed flat. The yields on the FGN-JAN-2026 and FGN-JUL-2030 bond papers increased by 6bps and 11bps respectively.
Treasury bill yields for the 91, 182 and 364-day papers closed flat at 2.46%, 3.35% and 5.64% respectively.
We expect a further decline in yields in the next trading session on the back of huge demand from investors and the deliberate efforts of the DMO to reduce borrowing costs.
MARKET SNAPSHOT
- Positive Performance Persists in the Local Bourse, NGX ASI Gains 99bps
- Bearish Sentiment across the Bond Yield Curve
- Mixed Sentiment in Global Stocks
- Negative Performance in Commodities Market
- Mixed Performance in African Stocks
