Activities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) ended on a positive trend on Wednesday, recording its first gain in the week due to buying interest in MTN Nigeria.
Specifically, the All-Share Index rebounded by 1.1 per cent to close higher at 22,789.64 compared with 22,543.07 achieved on Tuesday.
In the same vein, the market capitalisation which opened at N11.747 trillion inched N129 billion or 1.1 per cent to close at N11.876 trillion.
Accordingly, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date losses moderated to -13.1 per cent and -15.1 per cent, respectively.
The upturn was impacted by gains recorded in medium and large capitalised stocks, amongst which are MTN Nigeria, Guaranty Trust Bank, Cadbury Nigeria, PZ Cussons Nigeria and Caverton Offshore Support Group.
Analysts at Afrinvest Limited stated that “Despite the bullish performance recorded today, we expect the bearish sentiment to persist given the current global pandemic.
“However, we note that there are opportunities for bargain hunting.”
Market breadth closed positive with 18 gainers and 14 losers.
MTN Nigeria Communications led the gainers’ table, rising by N9.50 to close at N104.50 per share.
Guaranty Trust Bank followed with a gain of N1.30 to close at N20.90, while Cadbury improved by 55k to close at N6.25 per share.
PZ added 40k to close at N4.45, while Caverton gained 22k to close at N2.50 per share.
Conversely, Nestle recorded the highest loss, dropping by N35.30 to close at N880 per share.
Okomu Oil trailed with a loss of N4.95 to close at N55.05, while Dangote Cement dipped N4.30 to close at N133.40 per share.
UACN was down by 30k to close at N7.20, while Africa Prudential dipped 26k to close at N3.23k per share.
An analysis of the activity chart shows that Guaranty Trust Bank was the most active stock, trading 177.75 million shares valued at N3.52 billion.
Zenith Bank came second with an account of 147.01 million shares worth N1.98 billion, while Access Bank traded 87.96 million shares valued at N565.76 million.
FBN Holdings sold 60.82 million shares worth N247.63 million, while Stanbic IBTC traded 27.09 million shares valued at N819.05 million.
In all, the volume of shares traded decreased by 0.7 per cent with an exchange of 671.52 million shares valued at N10.58 billion transacted in 7,247 deals.
This was in contrast with a turnover of 675.91 million shares worth N8.06 billion traded in 7,368 deals on Tuesday.
