Chinwendu Obienyi

The All Share Index (ASI) of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) inched up by 0.66 per cent at the close of transactions yesterday as strong investors’ appetite saw 19 stocks appreciating, while four others depreciated.

Hence, investors gained a total of N79 billion as the market capitalisation closed Wednesday’s session at N11.872 trillion and 22,780.30 points even as year-to-date (YTD) return moderated to -15 per cent.

The rebound in market’s fundamentals was impacted by gains in medium and large capitalised stocks, including WAPCO, Zenith Bank and BUA Cement. Reacting to the performance of the market, traders say they expect trading to remain mixed for the rest of the week.

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Analysis of the market performance showed that the gainers’ chart was dominated by NEM which led with 10 per cent to close at N2.20 per share. WAPCO was next with 9.66 per cent to close at N11.35, Livestock feeds rose by 7.69 per cent to close at 0.70 kobo, Transcorp increased by 7.35 per cent to close at 0.73 kobo while PZ garnered 6.25 per cent to close at N4.25.

On the other hand, Sky Aviation topped the losers’ chart with 8.16 per cent to close at N1.80 per share. Union Diagnostics followed with a decline of 6.45 per cent to close at 0.29 kobo, Guinness lost 6.40 per cent to close at N19 while Caverton dipped by 4.26 per cent to close at N2.25.

Similarly, activity level on the bourse weakened as volume and value of traded stocks fell by 25.6 and 20.3 per cent respectively to 186.22 million units and N1.85 billion, exchanged in 3,446 deals.

The top traded stocks by volume were Zenith Bank (40 million units), FBN Holdings (30.7 million units) and GT Bank (25.8 million units) while GT Bank (N486.8 million), Zenith Bank (N420.5 million) and WAPCO (N192.5 million) led the value chart.