The capital market has maintained its bullish momentum for the fourth week in a row thanks to buying interest in BUA Cement Plc (+19.1%), Nestle Nigeria Plc (+1.7%), and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated Plc (+11,4%), with the holiday season and year-end festivities expected to usher in a bullish run.
As a result, the market capitalization and all-share index both increased by 1.51% to end the week at 48,881.93 and N26.63 trillion, respectively.
Similar to this, all other indices ended higher except for the NGX CG, NGX Premium, NGX Banking, NGX Pension, NGX AFR Bank Value, NGX AFR Div Yield, NGX MERI Growth, NGX MERI Value, and NGX Sovereign Bond indices, which declined by 0.91 percent, 1.23 percent, 0.25 percent, 0.39 percent, 1.53 percent, 0.79 percent, 0.79 percent,
Ambrose Omordion, the Chief Research Officer of Investdata Consulting Limited, responded to market performance by stating that, despite continued market volatility, the primary trend of recovery is still in place, providing technical traders and astute investors with a huge opportunity to buy low and sell high in advance of year-end seasonality and expectation.
“As position-taking in some of the major sectors of the market continued, especially in industrial goods and banking stocks ahead of the full-year earnings season, with bargain hunters and speculators taking advantage of this pullback or selloffs to buy low amid a high volatility, investors should target companies with a consistent track record of dividend payment with strong fundamentals and growth prospect that will support further capital appreciation and dividend payout.”
Cordros Capital said: “We expect the bulls to retain their dominance as buying activities due to positioning for 2022FY dividends will likely suppress selling activities.”
“In addition, we believe the outcome of the bond auction scheduled to be held next week will also shape market sentiments. Notwithstanding, we advise investors to take positions in only fundamentally justified stocks as the unimpressive macro story remains a significant headwind for corporate earnings.”
Afrinvest Securities Limited said: “The coming week, we anticipate a mixed performance as investors take profit while seeking bargain-hunting opportunities.”
Further analysis of last week’s trading revealed that active trading in the shares of UPDC Real Estate Investment Trust, FBN Holdings Plc, and Transnational Corporation of Nigeria (Transcorp) Plc last week increased the volume of shares traded, with 1.2 billion shares changing hands for a total value of N15.2 billion on 15,317 transactions made by investors on the exchange floor.
However, the number of shares moved above the 839.9 million shares worth N12.4 billion that were transacted in 16,183 transactions on December 2, 2022.
The top three stocks represented 765.2 million shares worth N4.3 billion in 847 transactions, representing 62.4% of the total volume of stocks.
On the sectoral activity chart, the financial services industry (measured by volume) led the chart with 514.1 million shares worth N5.1 billion exchanged in 6,489 deals, contributing 41.9 and 33.4 percent, respectively, to the total equities turnover.
The next largest sector was construction and real estate, with 463.3 million shares traded in 210 transactions for N1.6 billion. The industry conglomerate traded 69.017 million shares for N86.431 million in 528 transactions.
In comparison to the 2,400 units worth N1.256 million that were traded in 36 deals last week, 1,169 units worth N500,331.26 were traded in a total of 26 deals.
In comparison to the 9,687 units worth N6.330 million that were traded in 18 deals last week, a total of 20,863 units worth N22.124 million were traded this week in 32 deals.
