• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Five-day rally puts over N220bn in Nigeria stock investors’ pockets

Large caps maintain dominance as profits jump

Nigeria stocks investors have every reason to smile in the first five trading days into year 2020.

Looking at the market’s position as at January 6, these investors are about N227billion richer than they were as at December 31, 2019.

Nigerian equities market kicked-off the New Year on a bullish note, gaining on all trading days till date.

At the close of trading on Monday, the market gained 1.38 percent which helped push the month-to-date (MtD) positive return further to 1.85percent.

Some of analysts’ stock picks for the year 2020 were on demand at the Bourse on Monday where in 5,784 deals, equity dealers exchanged 520,433,769 units valued at N5.350billion.

On the review trading day (Monday January 6, 2020) Dangote Cement Plc recorded the highest gain after its share price moved from N142 to N146, adding N4 or 2.82percent, followed by Flour Mills Plc which moved from N19.75 to N21, adding N1.25 or 6.33percent.

Seplat recorded the biggest loss, from N592.1 to N589.5, losing N2.6 or 0.44percent followed by MTNN Plc which dipped from N109 to N108, losing N1 or 0.92percent.

The value of listed stocks which opened year 2020 at N12.971 trillion has risen to N13.198trillion as at Monday January 6. Likewise, the NSE All Share Index (ASI) which opened the year at 26,867.79 points has advanced remarkably to 27,339.68 points.

Some analysts believe that while investors continue to seek attractive markers on the Bourse, the market may witness mixed trading due to activities of profit takers.

“We expect mixed performance in the equities market, as investors are likely to take profit given the gains that occurred in the previous week”, according to Afrinvest research analysts in their recent note to investors.

In a related market development, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in a recent note signed by Abimbola Babalola, chairman, Index Governance Committee said it has updated the index rules for the NSE Lotus Islamic Index “and will remove the limit on the number of constituent stocks in the index commencing January 1, 2020.”

“This will enable the NSE Lotus Islamic Index to be more representative of the investible universe of Shari’ah compliant stocks as the market expands”, the NSE said.