Chinwendu Obienyi

Nigeria’s stock market recorded the first gain of the week as the All-Share Index (ASI) of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) rose by 0.17 per cent to close Thursday’s proceedings at 27,568.91 points.

The gain can be attributed to buying interest in BUA Cement, Union Bank of Nigeria (UBN) and UCAP. Hence the market’s year-to-date (YTD) return increased to 2.7 per cent while market capitalisation advanced N24 billion to close at N14.362 trillion.

Activity level was mixed as volume traded rose 37.2 per cent to 485.0 million units while value traded fell 28.6 per cent to N3.58 billion, which changed hands in 4,187 deals.

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Reacting, analysts at Afrinvest said, ‘‘There remain opportunities for bargain hunting however, we expect the equities market to close the week in the red”.

Across sectors, performance was mixed as 3 of 6 indices trended southward. The oil & gas index led laggards, down 0.9 per cent due to price depreciation in Oando (-6.6 per cent). Similarly, the Banking and Consumer Goods indices fell 0.5 and 0.04 per cent respectively, on the back of losses in GT Bank (-1.4 per cent) and Champion(-9.3 per cent).

Conversely, the Industrial Goods index led gainers, up 1.7 per cent due to buying interest in BUA Cement(+3.0 per cent) while the Insurance index trailed, rising 1.3 per cent following gains in AIICO (+10.0 per cent) and Wapic (+9.7 per cent). Finally, the AFR-ICT index closed flat.

Investors’ sentiment grew as 19 stocks appreciated while 9 others depreciated. The best performers were AIICO (+10.0 per cent), Ikeja Hotel (+10.0 per cent) and UCAP (+9.9 per cent) while Law Union (-10.0 per cent), Champion (-9.3 per cent) and Jaiz Bank (-7.4 per cent) led the laggards.