The equities market reversed the loss from the previous week following a bullish streak on all trading sessions last week despite mixed Q1 earnings reports by listed entities. Market capitalisation increased by N694.9bn to N13.1tn while year to date return settled at -6.1 percent.
The All-Share Index (ASI) rose 5.6 percent week-on-week to 25,204.75 points, due to buying interest in blue chip stocks, including Unilever (+33.9 percent), BUA Cement (+23.4percent ) and Mobil (+20.9 percent). Activity level advanced as average volume and value traded increased 62.2 percent and 62.6 percent to 259.6m units and N2.9bn respectively.
The most traded stocks by volume were Zenith Bank (172.2m units), Access Bank (151.8m units) and Guaranty Trust Bank (104.9m units) while Zenith (N2.8bn), Guaranty (N2.5bn) and Dangote Cement (N1.8bn) led by value. Performance across sectors was impressive w/w as all indices under coverage gained. The Industrial Goods and Banking indices gained the most, up 8.0 percent and 7.2percent due to gains in Dangote Cement (+4.5 percent ), BUA Cement (+23.4percent ), ETI (+12.0 percent ) and Zenith (+9.7 percent ). The Oil & Gas (+4.9 percent) and AFR-ICT (+2.8 percent) indices trailed, following price appreciation in Conoil (+9.9 percent) and MTNN (+5.0 percent). In the same vein, price upticks in WAPIC (+3.5 percent), Unilever (+33.9 percent) and PZ (+14.4 percent) pulled the Insurance and Consumer Goods indices 2.0 percent and 0.9 percent higher respectively.
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth strengthened to 6.8x from 1.0x last week as 54 stocks gained against 8 that declined.
