Nigeria Market Watch | May 18th 2015:Nigerian Equities Market opens High

Lagos, Nigeria (Capital Markets in Africa):- The Nigerian Bourse opened the week on a positive note, extending the uptrend observed in recent sessions to the fourth consecutive day. The Nigerian All Share Index added 99bps to berth at 34,781.5 points. The positive close was broadly driven by gains recorded in FORTE OIL (+9.1%), ZENITH (+2.7%) and GTBANK (+1.7%). Market Capitalization followed suit, improving by N120.2bn to close at N11.8tn.  Market activity also strengthened as volume and value traded appreciated 65.0% and 113.6% to settle at 305.7m units and N3.0bn respectively.

Industrial Goods Index Emerges Lone Loser
All sector indices trended northwards save for the Industrial goods index (-0.2%) consequent on losses in CHEMICAL & ALLIED PRODUCTS (-4.7%) and CCNN (-0.2%). The Oil & Gas index led sector gainers, advancing 3.5% against the backdrop of the rally in FORTE OIL (+9.1%) and TOTAL (+4.6%). The Banking Index also rose 1.9%, even as the Consumer Goods (+0.8%) and the Insurance sector (+0.3%) indices followed suit.

Market Breadth Positive
Sentiments were positive today as 38 stocks advanced against 18 decliners. This brought market breadth to 2.1x for the day. The advancers’ list was topped by SKYE BANK (+9.7%), FORTE OIL (+9.1%) and NEM INSURANCE (+8.8%) while TRANS-NATIONWIDE EXPRESS (-4.7%), CHEMICAL & ALLIED PRODUCTS (-4.7%) and VONO (-4.3%) led the laggards’ list. Performance is likely to be relatively calm in the next session as investors await the policy pronouncements of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) tomorrow.

Source: Afrinvest (West Africa) Limited Research Team.