Equities trading at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) took a turn from its southward drive on Thursday, as the market closed trading session positively amid significant interest in bellwether stocks.
Investors took advantage of attractive prices of shares of blue-chip stocks to make a re-entry into the market, thus pushing the market to a 0.78 percent appreciation at the end of the day’s activities.
Specifically, the All Share Index (ASI) rose by 0.78 percent to 41,014.30 basis points after nine days of consecutive losses.
At the end of the day session, investors gained N166.51 billion as the market capitalisation rose to N21.46 trillion as against an opening of N21.29 trillion.
Thus the Year-to-Date (YtD) gain of the ASI rose to1.84 per cent, while the Month-to-Date (MtD) loss moderated to -3.3 per cent.
Despite the positive sentiments of the day, the market breadth was unimpressive as more stocks fell. On the performance chart, 46 gainers were recorded against seven losers.
Notably, share prices of blue-chip stocks such as Dangote Cement and MTN Nigeria appreciated by 7.04 per cent and 1.61 per cent respectively.
Sectorial performance, however, remained weakened as four out of five indices tracked closed in the red zone.
Basically, only NSE Industrial index rose by 2.57 per cent, while the Banking, Insurance, Consumer Goods and Oil & Gas indices fell by 2.98 per cent, 2.93 per cent, 0.32 percent and 0.90 percent respectively.
Meanwhile, trading activity went uptick as total deals, volume and value of stocks trades, rose by 14.95 per cent, 247.40 per cent and 16.68 per cent to 6,573 deals, 1.27 billion units and N6.4 billion respectively.
Transnational Corporations was the most traded by volume at 55.75 million units, while MTN Nigeria was the most traded stock by value at N1.57 billion.