Nigeria Equity Watch | 18 Aug 2015 : Dangote Cement uplifts market …NSE ASI up 68bps

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa) — The light at the end of the tunnel seemed to be getting dimer on the Nigerian Bourse as the Bears ran the Market riot up until the last few minutes of trading when a sudden rally in DANGCEM (+5.0%) lifted the market. The Benchmark Index- All Share Index- appreciated 0.7% after trading today to settle at 30,112.62 points. Gains recorded in FCMB (+4.0%), WEMA (+3.5%) and ACCESS (+2.4%) also supported the market as investors gained N69.6bn and market capitalization settled at N10.3tn. Activity level within the market however waned as volume and value traded depreciated 35.3% and 1.0% to settle at 308.0m units and N3.6bn respectively.

The Industrial sector was the only sector that gained today (+1.7%), buoyed by the late rally in DANGCEM (+5.0%). On the other hand, the Insurance index was the largest decliner as the index lost 1.8% followed by the Oil & Gas Index which declined 1.4% on the back of losses in SEPLAT (-4.6%) and OANDO (-2.3%). Similarly, the Banking and Consumer Goods Indices fell 1.1% and 0.9% respectively.

Investor sentiments towards the market improved slightly today albeit still negative as market breadth increased to 0.4x (relative to 0.2x yesterday) as a result of 12 advancers against 33 decliners. The gainers’ chart was led by DANGCEM (+5.0%), GNI (+4.0%) and FCMB (+4.0%) while PZ (-9.7%), EVANSMED (-9.5%) and ETERNA (-5.0%) topped the laggards chart. The market has continued to drift southwards due to lack of exciting news to drive the buy sentiment, hence, we advise investors to maintain  a medium to long term considerations in making investment decisions.