In the just concluded week, the Nigerian
equities market closed positive amid renewed buy sentiment, especially on Telecoms stocks even as MTN International Mauritius offered for sale up to 575 million shares of its shareholding in MTN Nigeria Communications Plc to high net worth investors in Nigeria.
Hence, the NSE ASI rose w-o-w by 0.25% to
close at 43,308.29 points. Reflective of non-broad-based performance of the benchmark index most sector gauges closed in red.
The NSE Banking, NSE Consumer Goods, NSE Oil/Gas and the NSE Industrial indices plummeted by 0.29%, 2.00%, 0.87% and 0.03% to close at 390.48 points, 549.62 points, 364.84 points and 2,193.80 points respectively.
However, the NSE Insurance rose by 3.56% to close at 183.058 points. Meanwhile, market activity came in mixed as deals and volume of stocks traded decreased by 2.06% and 5.37% to 19,990 deals and 1.39 billion units respectively.
However, the value of stock traded increased by 33.17% to 27.89 billion.
In the new week, Cowry Research expects the local bourse index to trade sideways as investors wait on the sidelines to take advantage of declining stock prices.
We expect more sales from retail investors than the institutional investors as yuletide season beckons.