Nigerian stocks and bonds started the month of October on a good note as investors eyeing return piled into both asset classes.
At the end of today’s trading session, the Nigerian equities market closed positive as the benchmark index improved by 0.05 percent to close at 40,243.05 points.
This was mainly due to buy pressures in bellwether stocks such as Dangote Sugar (+0.57 percent) and Zenith Bank (+0.21 percent). Consequently, the YTD loss declined to -0.07 percent as market capitalisation increased by N14.45 billion to close at N20.97 trillion.
The sectoral performance marginally strengthened as the Insurance index, the biggest gainer, increased by 1.53 percent on Mansard Insurance’s 9.87 percent jump.
The Consumer Goods and Banking indices followed suit, rising by 0.05 percent and 0.01 percent led by Dangote Sugar (+0.57 percent) and Zenith Bank (+0.12 percent) respectively.
On the flip side, the Oil & Gas and Industrial sector declined by 0.38 percent and 0.02 percent on Oando’s 3.09 percent decline and WAPCO’s 0.44 percent slide respectively.
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Investor appetite for stocks is expected to remain strong as the market presents bargain opportunities for investors chasing positive real return on investments.
Bonds
There was bullish sentiment across the bond yield curve as bond yields closed lower.
The yields on the FGN-APR-2023, FGN-APR-2024, FGN-JAN-2026 and FGN-JUL-2030 bonds compressed by 3bps, 2bps, 1bp and 19bps respectively.
Treasury bill yields for the 91 and 364-day papers closed flat at 4.14 percent and 7.49 percent respectively while the 182-day paper compressed by 1bp to close at 4.10 percent.
Analysts expect a further decline in yields in the next trading session on the back of huge demand from investors and the deliberate efforts of the Debt Management Office (DMO) to reduce borrowing costs.
