At the end of yesterday’s trading session, the Nigerian equities market closed negative as the benchmark index declined by 0.22% to close at 42,317.52 points.
This was mainly due to selloffs in bellwether stocks such as FLOURMILL (-0.70%) and WAPCO (-0.80%). Consequently, the YTD return decreased to 5.08% as market capitalisation declined by ₦48.839 billion to close at ₦22.08 trillion.
The sectoral performance marginally weakened as three of the five indices under coverage declined. The Banking index, the biggest loser, declined by 1.11% on STANBIC (-1.37%). The Oil & Gas and Industrial indices followed suit, falling by 0.08% and 0.05% on OANDO(-0.42%) and CUTIX (-1.51%) respectively. On the flip side, the Insurance and Consumer Goods indices, the gainers improved by 0.35% and 0.08% on CUSTODIAN (+9.86%) and NB (+1.06%) respectively.
Investor sentiment closed negative as market breadth decreased to 0.72x from 1.44x. This was illustrated by the advance of 13 stocks, led by CUSTODIAN (9.86%) and ROYALEX (8.62%) and the decline of 18 stocks, led by UPDCREIT (-6.67%) and JAPAULGOLD (-5.13%). Activity level was mixed as the total volume increased by 17.61% while the total value declined by 30.09% as investors exchanged about 270.09 million units of shares worth over ₦2.30billion.
We expect positive sentiment to return 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 mixed sentiment across the bond yield curve as 2 of the 4 bond yields under coverage closed lower while the yields on the FGN-JAN-2026 and FGN-JUL-2030 bond papers closed flat at 11.28% and 12.56% respectively. Both yields on the FGN-APR-2023 and FGN-APR-2024 bond papers compressed by 53bps and 5bps respectively.
Treasury bill yields for the 91-day paper and 182-day paper closed flat at 3.00% and 3.74 respectively while the 364-day paper decreased by 1bp to close at 5.63%.
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
- Negative Performance Returns in the Local Bourse, NGX ASI Sheds 22bps
- Mixed Sentiment across the Bond Yield Curve
- Negative Sentiment in Global Stocks
- Negative Performance in the Commodities Market
- Bearish Performance in African Stocks
