Nigeria Equity Watch | 16 July 2015 : Nigerian Equities Market halts recent run of losses … All Share index marginally improves by 30 basis points

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — The Nigerian Equities Market halted its recent run of losses today as the Benchmark Index — All Share Index- marginally improved at the close of trading. The ASI appreciated 0.3% to close at 31, 047.99 points. This improvement in performance was broadly due to gains recorded in banking counters as ETI (+8.2%), ACCESS (+4.8%) and GUARANTY (+1.7%) led the charge. Similarly, market capitalization improved N51.0bn berthing at N10.6tn for the day while activity level weakened as volume and value traded declined 47.5% and 62.1% closing at 222.2m units and N2.8bn respectively.

All sectors traded southwards, save for the Banking Index which appreciated 1.9% on the back of gains in ETI (+8.2%) and GUARANTY (+1.7%). Spearheading the sector losers, was the Oil and Gas Index (-0.9%) due to losses in FORTE (-4.5%) while the Insurance index closely trailed (-0.8%) following price depreciation in MANSARD (-3.5%). In the same vein, the Consumer Goods and the Industrial Indices lost 0.5% and 0.1% respectively.

Investor sentiments within the market today slightly improved, nevertheless remained negative with a market breadth of 0.7x as 20 stocks advanced while 29 stocks declined. The gainers’ chart was topped by ETI (+8.2%), ACCESS (+4.8%) and UNITY BANK (+4.7%) while CCNN (-9.4%), TRANS EXPRESS (-9.0%) and MAYBAKER (-5.0%) led the losers’ list. Despite the marginal signs of improvement, investors are still advised to take medium to long term investment positions.