At the end of yesterday’s trading session, the Nigerian equities market closed in red as the benchmark index declined by 0.26% to close at 47,360.79 points.
Yesterday’s performance was due to selloffs in large-cap stocks such as NGXGROUP (-8.70%) and GTCO (-1.11%). Consequently, the YTD return declined to 10.87% as market capitalisation decreased by ₦65.73 billion to close at ₦25.53 trillion.
The sectoral performance marginally weakened as three of the five indices under coverage declined. The Banking index, the biggest loser, declined by 1.32% on GTCO (-1.11%). The Consumer Goods and Industrial Indices followed suit, decreasing by 1.28% and 0.55% on DANGSUGAR (-7.69%) and WAPCO (-7.69%) respectively. Conversely, the Oil & Gas and Insurance Indices, the gainers, improved by 5.09% and 1.01% on SEPLAT (+8.53%) and NEM (+8.38%) respectively.
Investors’ sentiment was negative but the same as the previous as the market breadth closed at 0.44x. This was illustrated by the decline of 34 stocks, led by NIGERINS (-10.00%) and INTBREW (-9.73%) and the advance of 15 stocks, led by ROYALEX (+10.00%) and MULTIVERSE (+9.09%). Activity level weakened as the total volume and value decreased by 24.45% and 46.99% respectively as investors exchanged about 279.95 million units of shares worth over ₦4.16 billion.
We expect positive sentiment to return in the next trading session as the equities market still presents decent opportunities for investors chasing positive real returns on investments.
Fixed Income
There was bullish sentiment across the bond yield curve as three of the four bond yields closed lower while the yield on the FGN-JUL-2030 closed flat. The yields on the FGN-APR-2023, FGN-MAR-2024, and FGN-JAN-2026 compressed by 1bp, 1bp, and 17bps respectively.
Treasury bill yields for the 91 and 182-day paper closed flat at 3.21% and 3.56% respectively while the 364-day paper yield compressed by 1bp to close at 5.06%.
We expect market activity to be influenced by the liquidity levels and foreign investors’ participation.
MARKET SNAPSHOT
- Bear Outweighs the Bull in the Local Bourse, NGX ASI Sheds 26bps
- Bullish Sentiment across the Bond Yield Curve
- Positive Performance in Global Stocks
- Brent Crude Reports at $110.42/barrel
- Mixed Performance in African Stocks
