• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BusinessDay

Nigerian stocks post biggest daily gain since April 2015

Unrelenting bears push Nigeria’s bourse further into negative zone

Nigerian stocks powered higher Thursday afternoon as the Lagos bourse Composite Index posted its biggest daily gain in more than five years.

The All-Share Index of the Nigerian Stock Exchange climbed 6.23 percent, its biggest daily gain since April 1, 2015, the first trading day after President Muhammadu Buhari was elected into office.

“For the first time since I have been in this market we had to use the circuit breaker today to suspend trading for about 30 mins because the market was overwhelmed with demand,” Ayorinde Akinloye, a research analyst at CSL Stockbrokers, said.

Dangote Cement, Nestle, Nigeria Breweries, and Presco were the top advancers.

“I will tie the driver to the low-interest environment and to the realisation that low-interest rate might be here for a while,” Yinka Ademuwagun, research analyst, FMCGs, United Capital Plc, said.

READ ALSO: Nigeria’s T-bill rates approach zero but investors oversubscribe by N435bn

With a year-to-date return of 31.67 percent, the NSE ASI stood at 35,342.46; the stocks added 2,074.10 points to move higher than the previous close of 33,268.36.

Meanwhile, rates on T-bills plunged further on Wednesday as CBN settled its stop rates at 0.04 percent, 0.15 percent and 0.3 percent for the 91-day, and 182-day and 364-day maturities, a further decline from the previous stop rates auction of 0.34 percent, 0.5 percent and 0.9 percent.

More than N435 billion worth of unsuccessful transactions were recorded at the Nigerian Treasury Bills (T-Bills) auction conducted Wednesday by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) as limited attractive instruments forced investors to bid at rates as low as 1 percent each for the 92-day and 182-day bills and 1.9 percent for the longer 364-day bill.