The last day of trading in 2019, saw the equities market posting a bullish performance as buying interest in Seplat, Stanbic and Wapco raised the All-Share Index (ASI) by 0.87 per cent to close at 26,842.07 points.
Similarly, the market year-to-date (YTD) return moderated to -14.6 per cent while market capitalisation increased by N112.4 billion to N12.958 trillion. Also, activity level was mixed as volume traded rose 175.2 per cent to 1.05 million units while value traded fell by 23.5 per cent to N5.49 billion, exchanged in 2,445 deals.
The top traded stocks by volume were Access Bank (47.3 million units), UBA (37.4 million units) and Zenith Bank (29.8 million units) while Dangote Cement (N2.4 billion), Zenith Bank (N554.0 million) and Access Bank (N471.4 million) were the top traded stocks by value.
In line with market performance, sector performance was broadly positive except the Consumer Goods index which closed negative, down 0.3 per cent, on the back of losses in Nigerian Breweries (-1.3 per cent) and Dangote Sugar (-1.5 per cent). The Oil & Gas index led gainers, up 6.7 per cent, following buying interest in Seplat (+10.0 per cent) and Oando (+8.4 per cent).