Equities market opens trading week with N206.58bn gain

Temitope Adebayo

The equities market of the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) opened this week trading activities with market capitalization gain of N206.58billion to close at N30.14trillion, compared to near N30 trillion posted on Friday.

At the close of the trading session of the week, the Nigerian equities, also, extended gains from last week as the benchmark index closed 0.69 per cent stronger to settle at 55,328.42 points.

For instance, interests in index heavyweight BUAFOODS (+4.65%), alongside Tier-1 banks, ZENITHBANK (+0.78%), GTCO (+1.96%) and STANBIC (+10.00%) kept the market in the green.

As a result, the year-to-date (YTD) return rose to 7.96 per cent, while market activities showed trade turnover settled lower relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions down by 38.84 per cent.

A total of 149.78million shares valued at N1.54billion were exchanged in 3,186 deals. OANDO (+10.00%) led the volume chart with 62.64m units traded while ZENITHBANK (+0.78%) led the value chart in deals worth N205.55million.

Market breadth closed positive at a 2.11-to-1 ratio with advancing issues outnumbering declining ones. STANBIC (+10.00%) topped eighteen (18) others on the leader’s log while FTNCOCOA (-6.90%) led eight (8) others on the laggard’s table.