Equities trading at the Nigerian Exchange Limited closed in the green last week, as the All-Share Index increased by 2.1 percent week-on-week to close at 54,085.30 basis points.
Due to this, equities investors earned N596 billion as the market cap, crossing the N29 trillion market, ended the week at N29.16 trillion as against an opening of N28.562 trillion.
The positive performance noted last week was largely due to the renewed investor interest in Airtel Africa, which ignited a massive 20.2 percent weekly growth. The appreciation in Airtel Africa’s stocks proved to be more than sufficient to offset losses in Guinness Nigeria, Nigeria Breweries and MTN Nigeria, which respectively recorded 11.2 percent, 10.0 percent and 4.8 percent declines in share values.
As a result of this, the month-to-date and year-to-date returns for the index respectively increased to 9.0 percent and 26.6 percent.
Trading levels on Nigerian Exchange lower than previous week
Noticeable however, activity levels were weaker than the previous week, with trading volume declining by 39.4 percent.
Performance across sectors including Insurance, Consumer Goods, Oil and Gas, Banking and Industrial Goods saw losses of 6.3 percent, 3.9 percent, 0.9 percent 0.8 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively.
The Financial Services Industry led the activity chart last week measured by volume, with 1.286 billion shares worth N10.745 billion traded in 12,379 deals, thereby contributing 69.90 percent to the total equity turnover volume.
This was followed by the Conglomerates Industry with 251.105 million shares worth N1.659 billion in 1,371 deals. In third place by performance was the Consumer Goods industry with a turnover of 105.601 million shares worth N2.52 billion in 4,263 deals.
In spite of the bullish performance at the Exchange, the recent decision of the MPC to hike the MPR by 150 basis points caused analysts to expect negative trends to dominate market performance at least in the short-term.
