Nigeria Equity Watch | 03 August 2015 : Nigeria market takes a breather after 8 Days of Losses… NSE ASI up 0.2%

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — The Nigerian All Share Index (ASI) started the month on a positive note, up 0.2% to close at 30,247.83pts during today’s trade. Similarly, investors gained N23.2bn, thus market capitalisation settle at N10.4tn. Today’s slight rise in the ASI was on the back of appreciations recorded in DANGOTE CEMENT (+0.6%) and GUINNESS (+3.9%). Market activities measured by volume and value of shares traded also increased 19.4% to 320.2m units and 64.3% to close N3.5bn respectively.

Sector performance was broadly positive. The Insurance index led the sector gainers with 0.5% return attributable to gains recorded in MANSARD (+0.8%) and CONTINSURE (+2.4%). The Banking and Industrial Goods sectors followed with 0.3% a piece due to price appreciation in ETI (+1.4%) and DANGOTE CEMENT (+0.6%) accordingly. The Consumer Goods index also gained 14bps. On the flip side, the Oil & Gas basket emerged lone loser after shedding 0.4% consequent on losses recorded in OANDO (-3.1%) and TOTAL (-1.8%).

Still on a positive note, market breadth (gainers/decliners) settled at 1.0x today, as 21 stocks advanced against 21 declining stocks. FLOURMILLS (+4.9%), TRANSCORP (+4.9%), MAY & BAKER (+4.6%) led the gainer’s list while UACN (-5.3%), NNFM (-5.0%) and IKEJA HOTEL (- 4.9%) topped the losers’ chart. Notwithstanding the slight gain recorded today, we do not believe the trend will be sustained in the coming sessions as investors still maintain a soft outlook for the economy.
Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team