Nigerian equity bull continues: 18 Feb 2015

NSE-ASI up 255bps.
The Nigerian equity market today extended its 2-day rally in large cap stocks as the broader market Index advanced 255bps to close 29,177.58pts, paring the NSE-ASI YTD loss to15.8%. Similarly, market capitalisation added N241.9bn to close at N9.7tn. However, market activities measured by volume and value declined 15.2% and 0.3% to close at 424.3m units and N3.5bn respectively.

Broad Sector Gains Persist
All sector indices sustained their positive momentum today. The Banking index led sector gainers with 4.8%, against the back drop of price appreciation in GTBank (10.2%) and Zenith (3.4%). Also, on account of optimistic trading in Dangote Cement (3.9%), the Industrial Goods sector advanced 3.0%. The Consumer Goods, Insurance and Oil & Gas indices also advanced 0.7%, 0.3% and 0.2% respectively.

Profit Taking Imminent
Market Breadth improved further today to close at 2.7x (30 advancers’ vs 11 decliners’). Top gainers were GTBank (10.2%), Transcorp (9.0%) and Access (6.1%) while RT Briscoe (5.0%), International Breweries (5.0%) and Julius Berger (4.9%) led the losers ‘chart.  Against the backdrop of significant price appreciation in the past trading days (RSI at 57.5 from 19.8 on Monday), we expect short term investors may begin to take profit before the end of the week, hence causing a slowdown in the market rally. However, significant opportunities for long term investors still abound as investors anticipate the release of FY:2014 results.

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