Stock investors book over N690bn gain in 4 days

Nigeria’s stock investors booked about N695billion gain in just four trading days into this week as they continued to take position in fundamentally sound stocks.

The market succeeded in maintaining strong positive trading pattern since week-open as evidenced in record four-day consecutive gains, which pushed valued of listed stocks from week open low of N11.997trillion to N12.692trillion on Thursday.

Amid the gradual easing of lockdown across the globe and improvement in crude oil price, most market watchers expect economic activities to pick up gradually and as such retail investors continuing to channel funds into the equities market in a bid to take advantage of attractive counters trading at lower bands.

At the close of trading session on Thursday, May 7, the market booked another increase by 0.87percent, pushing the month-to- date gain high by 5.79 percent, and moderating the year-to-date negative return to -9.27percent.

day low of 24,143.37 points, while the value of listed stocks increased to N12.692trillion from

The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) All-Share Index (ASI) increased to 24,354.25 points from preceding N12.582trillion. Investors gained about N110billion.

Again, large cap stocks like Nestle Nigeria, Dangote Cement, and Nigerian Breweries were highly on the demand side during the remote trading session.

Nestle rallied from N975 to N1000, up N N25 or 2.56percent. Dangote Cement also moved up from N143.8 to N150, adding N6.2 or 4.31percent while Nigerian Breweries increased from N33 to N34.9, adding N1.9 or 5.76percent.

These recent gains at the Bourse will soon usher in era of profit- taking activities in the market.

FBN Holdings Plc, Zenith Bank Plc, GTBank Plc and ETI plc were actively traded stocks on Thursday. In 5,860 deals, investors exchanged 431,582,257 units valued at N5.260billion.

Nigerian Bourse ranks 2nd in Bloomberg’s Best Performing Indexes over the past month

By Iheanyi Nwachukwu • May 8, 2020

Iheanyi Nwachukwu

Iheanyi Nwachukwu, is a creative content writer with almost two decades journalism experience writing on banking, finance, capital markets, and tax. The multiple awards winning journalist is Assistant Editor, BusinessDay. Iheanyi holds BSc Degree in Economics from Imo State University; Master of Science (MSc) Degree in Management from University of Lagos. Iheanyi has attended several work-related trainings including (i) Advanced Writing and Reporting Skills (Pan African University, Lagos); (ii) News Agency Journalism (Indian Institute of Mass Communication {IIMC}, New Delhi, India); and (iii) Capital Markets Development and Regulations (International Law Institute {ILI} of Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA). Other trainings Iheanyi attended include: Economic/Political Risk Analysis (By Thomson Reuters Foundation); International Financial Journalism (IFJ) (By PMA Media Training, UK); Effective Business Writing Skills (By Phillips Consulting); Reporting on Corporate Governance (By International Finance Corporation (IFC) & Thomson Reuters Foundation UK); etc. In addition, he has participated in high-level economy & markets events in Dubai, South Africa, Morocco, and other African countries like Zambia, Ghana and Gambia.