Nigeria’s equities market closes positive as Index up 0.76% Wednesday

The Nigeria’s equities market closed positive on Wednesday with the market All-Share Index (ASI) appreciating 0.76 per cent, to 29,970.86 points, driven by gains in bellwether stocks.
Thus, the Month-to-Date and the Year-to-Date losses moderated to -3.45per cent and -4.64 per cent respectively.
The Consumer Goods (+2.75%) and Insurance (+0.03%) indices were the sole gainers among sectoral indices, following demand for NESTLE (+5.31%) and MBENEFIT (+4.76%) stocks.
Meanwhile, selloffs in the shares of GUARANTY (-2.39%), CCNN (-3.55%) and SEPLAT (-3.39%) led to negative returns in the Banking (-0.25%), Industrial Goods (-0.37%) and Oil & Gas (-1.40%) indices, respectively.
Market breadth was negative, with 17 losers and 16 gainers, led by TRANSEXPR (-9.76%) and ACCESS (+9.92%) shares, respectively. Total volume of trades decreased by 32.78% to 216.01 million units, valued at NGN3.23 billion and exchanged in 4,025 deals.
“Whilst some positive earnings releases, as well as downbeat prices in value stocks, appear to drive investor interest, it is worth stating that the absence of a positive trigger continues to dampen our outlook for equities in the short-to-medium term. However, strengthening macroeconomic variables remain supportive of long-term gains”, analysts at Cordros Capital said.