Nigerian equities budge marginally as ECB stimulus yet to make impact

Last week, world indexes recorded mixed end of trad¬ing values. Equities markets in the US closed in the red (the S&P was down by 0.26 percent, the Dow was also down by 0.22 percent), while Lon¬don and Asia closed in the green.
Concerns in the US were majorly centred around the impact of the weaker Euro on the competitiveness of US exports.
Undoubtedly, the ECB’s stimulus will lead to a Euro weakening, making its output more competitive than the US, whose dol¬lar has been on the path of strengthening since it start-ed posting figures showing that it was improving faster than other major econo¬mies.
The Euro went into an¬other nosedive on Friday, crashing down through $1.13, $1.12 and all the way to $1.1115 in a matter of hours, in its biggest daily fall in about three years.
European equities how¬ever ended the week on a high, with the FTSE surging as European markets con¬tinued to react positively to news of the ECB initiating its economic stimulus pro¬gramme.
The ECB’s plan to inject out about 1trn euros to boost the euro zone economy set stocks in the economic bloc up for their best weekly gain since 2011.
With the stimulus pro¬gramme potentially an open- ended one, analysts believe that it will not be too long before the effects starts filtering into frontier mar¬kets like Nigeria.
In Nigeria, the NSE, though going through sev¬eral dips and rallies at intra¬day trading, closed higher at 0.4 percent.

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The NSE Banking Index surged the most after Fri¬day’s trading, gaining by 1.5 percent at the close of Friday’s trading. The NSE 30 index also closed in the positive region, gaining 0.5 percent; the consumer goods segment gained a marginal 0.3 percent.
Agriculture stocks led market gains as at Friday’s closing. Presco gained up to 5 percent or N1.41, to close at N29.63, higher than N28.22 on its previ¬ous closing figure. Okomu oil was the second high¬est gainer, closing higher by 4.98 percent to end trading at N24.46 from its previous closing price of N23.30.
Dangote sugar followed closely behind, with a 4.93 percent gain to close at N5.53. Flour mills also gained 4.89 percent to close trading at N38.80; and Cos¬tain gained 4.84 percent to end at 65 kobo.
Dangote flour led losses for the day, losing up to 9.38 percent t close at N3.52, down from N3.19. ABC Transport followed behind, losing 3.64 percent to close at 55 kobo. Wapic insurance similarly lost 3.64 percent to close at 55 kobo; NPF Mi¬crofinance bank shed 3.57 percent, closing at 84 kobo; while NEM insurance lost by 3.39 percent to close at 59 kobo.
First Bank of Nigeria Holdings was the most traded stock, as investors exchanged 190.3 million shares in 3,219 deals.
Top stock brokers for the week ended on the 23rd of January, according to the NSE include Vetiva Capi¬tal Management, which booked a transaction value of N14.64bn; Stanbic IBTC brokers with a transaction value of N6bn; CSL stock brokers with at transaction value of N4.6bn. Rencap securities, which booked a transaction value of N3.2bn; and Chapel Hill Denham with a transaction value of N364.6m.