Equities market climbs on interests in banking stocks

Nigeria’s equities market maintained a positive performance at the close of trade Tuesday as price upticks in Guaranty Trust Bank, GTB (+1.1%), Union Bank of Nigeria, UBN (+4.5%) and Zenith Bank (+0.8%) drove the benchmark index 0.14 percent higher to 32,173.66 points.

Consequently, market capitalisation increased by N16.3 billion to N12.0 trillion while year to date return improved to 2.4 percent.

Activity level also strengthened as value and volume traded advanced by 32.5 percent and 75.8 percent to N3.5 billion and 400.5 million units respectively.

The most active stocks for the day by value were GTB (N1.2bn), Zenith (N65.0m), FBN Holdings (N359.0m) while Diamond Bank (119.8m units), FBN Holdings (44.3m units) and UBA (40.8m units) led by volume.

Sectoral performance ended mixed as only 2 of 5 major indices closed in the green.

The banking index rose 0.92 percent as GTB (+1.1%), UBN (+4.5%) and Zenith (+0.8%) continued to experience buying interests.

Similarly, the Consumer Goods index advanced 0.3 percent higher following gains in Dangote Flour (+5.8%), Dangote Sugar (+1.0%) and Honeywell Flour (+2.3%).

On the flip side, the Insurance index declined by 0.3 percent on the back of losses in Custodian and Allied Insurance (-2.5%) and Mutual Benefits (-7.4%).

Similarly, the Industrial Goods and Oil & Gas indices fell by 0.3 percent and 0.1 percent  respectively due sell offs in Dangote Cement (-0.5%), Red Star Express (-9.1%), Oando (-0.9%) and Japaul Oil (-8.7%) .

Investor sentiment weakened as market breadth (advance/decline ratio) stood at 0.8x, declining from 2.5x in the previous trading session.

Dangote Flour (+5.8%), UBN (+4.5%) and Nascon Allied (+4.2%) were the top performing stocks for the day while Red Star Express (-9.1%), Japaul Oil (-8.7%) and Mutual Benefits (-7.4%) led laggards.