(Greenwich Merchant Bank): The Nigerian equities market closed bearish as the NGX-ASI and market capitalization depreciated by 0.18% to 52,657.88points and N28.68 trillion respectively. Reported losses in heavy weight equities like MTNN (1.75%), GUINNESS (3.71%), UBA (0.61%) and ACCESSCORP (4.26%) contributed to the decline.
Consequently, Year-to-Date, the equity index closed positive at 2.74%.
However, market activity was bullish as volume and value traded increased by 25.03% and 19.52% to 166.75million units N2,244.86million respectively. Meanwhile, FIDELITYBANK recorded the highest volume traded while MTNN was the highest value traded.
Also, market breadth was bullish at 2.30x with Twenty-three (23) counters gained as Ten (10) counters lagged.
Moreso, on a sectorial performance, the gainers are the Insurance +0.36%, Oil & Gas +0.13% and Industrial sector +0.01%. But, the losers are Consumer goods (0.03%) and Banking (0.03%) sectors.
Fixed Income Market
At the money market, system liquidity declined by 12.98% to close at N1,216.55 billion from N1,398.02 billion recorded the previous day. However, average interest rate was at variance to expected direction. The Open Buy Back and Overnight rate closed same as yesterday’s rate at
10.50% and 11.00% respectively.
At the fixed income market, trading was generally quiet as only few instruments were traded.
As a result, at the NTBills market, average yield closed same as yesterday’s rate of 1.81%.
Moreso, trading activities at the FGN Bonds market was bullish. Thus, average yield declined by 17bps to 13.57% from yesterday’s closing rate
of 13.74%.
The Naira exchange rate, depreciated by N0.50/USD at the I&E Window to close trading at N461.75/USD from NGN461.25/USD.
Ifunanya Ikueze is an Engineer, Safety Professional, Writer, Investor, Entrepreneur and Educator.
