Nigerian bourse extends positive run as Index up 0.46% Wednesday

The Nigerian equities market extended its positive run from the prior session, as the market All-Share Index (ASI) appreciated by 0.46 per cent to 30,878.56 points on Wednesday following investors’ interest across Tier-1 and Tier-2 banks.

Hence, the Month-to-Date loss declined to 1.76 per cent.

Across sector indices, the Industrial (-0.04%), Insurance (-0.24%), and Oil & Gas (-0.14%) indices closed negative, driven by WAPCO (-0.40%), NEM (-4.40%), and FO (-1.67%) respectively.

Meanwhile, the Banking (+1.64%) index was positive, following marked gains in GUARANTY (+2.80%). The Consumer Goods index was flat.

Market breadth was positive with 21 gainers and 10 losers, led by FIRSTALUM (+9.68%) and RESORTSAL (-8.33%) stocks respectively. Elsewhere, total volume and value traded increased by 53.0% and 21.5% to 376.26 million units and NGN2.97 billion respectively, and exchanged in 3,405 deals.

“We guide investors to trade cautiously in the short to medium term, as selloffs are likely to persist, amidst brewing political uncertainty, and the absence of a positive catalyst. However, stable macroeconomic fundamentals remain supportive of long-term gains”, analysts Cordros Capital advised.

In the foreign currency market, the USD/NGN depreciated by 0.04 per cent to NGN362.58 at the I&E FX window, but was flat at NGN363.00 in the parallel market. Total turnover in the IEW moderated by 10.9 per cent to USD334.34 million, with trades executed within the NGN306.95-364.00/USD band.

On the fixed income and money market, the overnight lending rate moderated by 342 bps to 15.67 per cent, following inflows worth NGN29.58 billion from the JUL-2030 bond coupon payments. The CBN conducted an OMO auction wherein NGN64.77 billion – NGN1.61 billion of the 92DTM, NGN13.18 billion of the 176DTM, and NGN49.98 billion of the 330DTM – worth of bills were sold at respective stop rates of 11.90 per cent,13.50 per cent and 15.00 per cent.

Trading in the treasury bills market was bullish, as average yield moderated by 29 bps to 14.47 per cent. Buy sentiment was spread across the short (-42 bps), mid (-42 bps) and long (-15 bps) segments, driven by demand for the 71DTM (-117 bps), 141DTM (-85 bps) and 295DTM (-52 bps) bills, respectively.

Proceedings in the bond market were also bullish, as average yield compressed by 9bps to 15.09%. Demand was concentrated at the short (-22 bps) and long (-8 bps) ends of the curve amidst interest in the JUN-2019 (-48 bps) and MAR-2036 (-16 bps) bonds, respectively. Conversely, yield widened at the mid (+2 bps) segment following a selloff of the MAR-2024 (+13 bps) bond.