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Equity trading this week started on a downside with mixed signals from technical indicators as investors reactions to full-year corporate earnings stood loud despite the excess liquidity in the fixed income space as exposed by the oversubscriptions recorded across tenor gauges of the Nigerian Treasury Bills on offers at the Wednesday PMA despite the low rates.
To this, the increased buying interest and mixed
sentiment across some major sectors of the
market despite the apparently ranging position
of the index action may continue to give a clear
direction as more companies release their
scorecards.
Thus, benchmark index closed 0.12% week on week as it inched northward to 52,657.88 points as the market gained further by 0.12% to N28.68 trillion.
Also, the ASI’s year-to-date return was 2.75%, and investors gained N34 billion in two of the five sessions this week, owing to increased buy-power and momentum across some of the large and mid-cap names.
Across the sectors this week, sentiments were largely positive for most of the indices except for the Consumer Goods index that lost 1.09% week on week.
On the other hand, price appreciation from buying momentum were witnessed in the banking index, which gained by 1.65% week on week alongside the oil and gas index (1.73%), insurance and industrial goods indexes which also rose by 0.77% and 0.37% in that order.
Meanwhile, the top gaining securities for the week were MBENEFIT (+23%), UNILEVER (+16%), and GEREGU (+15%) while the week’s losers were NB (-10%), UNITYBNK (-5%) and CADBURY (-5%).
The level of trading activity in the equity market was downbeat for another week with the total deals for the week falling by 1.68% week on week to 18,248 as stockbrokers recorded a 39.02% drop in trade volumes to 756.77 million and valued at N9.86 billion, indicating a decrease by 37.1% week on week.
Looking ahead into the new week, we expect mixed sentiment and portfolio rebalancing in the midst of divergence in fixed income rates and policy rate adjustment to 17.50%, in the face of Q4 earnings expectations and election uncertainty, as pullback at this point add more strength to upside potential.
However, we continue to advise investors to trade on companies’ stocks with sound fundamentals
