What Stocks Led the Way in the Nigerian Stock Market’s 71bps Surge on Friday?

• Closing the holiday shortened week on a positive note, the benchmark index of the Nigerian stock market edged higher by 0.71% w/w to close at 115,429.54 points. Over the course of the week, gains in BUACEMENT (+7.53% w/w) and MTNN (+1.82% w/w), OANDO (+21.37% w/w), outweighed losses in ARADEL (-9.09% w/w), ZENITHBANK (-1.08% w/w) , and FIRSTHOLDCO (-4.08% w/w) driving the market’s positive performance. As a result, the market capitalisation gained N512.52bn w/w to close at N72.79tn
• Today, bullish sentiment persisted on the Lagos bourse. Sustained buy interests in industrial heavyweights namely, BUA CEMENT (+7.53%), alongside OANDO (+9.35%) and STANBIC (+9.98%), offsetting losses in FIRSTHOLDCO (-5.37%), FIDELITYBK (-2.28%) and CONOIL (-9.99%), keeping the market in the green. Consequently, the benchmark index posted a 0.67% gain to settle at 115,429.54 points. The year-to-date (YTD) return rose to 12.15%, while market capitalization gained ₦485.82bn today. 
• Analysis of today’s market activities showed trade turnover settled higher relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions up by 26.53%. A total of 933.23m shares valued at ₦17.95bn were exchanged in 20,500 deals. TANTALIZER (+1.74%) led the volume chart with 420.45m units traded while GTCO (+0.70%) led the value chart in deals worth ₦2.52bn.
• Market breadth closed positive at a 2.08-to-1 ratio with advancing issues outnumbering the declining ones. INFINITY (+10.00%) topped forty-eight (48) others on the leader’s table while NNFM (-10.00%) led twenty-three (23) others on the laggard’s log.
• Sector wise, most indexes closed positive, the NGX Consumer Goods Index led sectoral gainers log (+1.32% w/w), followed by the NGX Industrial Goods index (+1.21% w/w), NGX 30 Index followed closely (+0.98% w/w), the NGX Pension  Index gained (+0.95% w/w), while the NGX Banking  Index  (+0.00% w/w) closed flat. Contrarily, he NGX Oil and Gas Index shed (+1.22% w/w) and the NGX Insurance Index lost (+0.11% w/w) to close the week in the red.

NASD Summary

• The NASD OTC Securities Exchange reversed some losses from the prior session, with the NASD Securities Index (NSI) gaining 0.12% to end the session at 3,341.22 points. However, market capitalisation decreased by the same margin to N1.96tn. 
• Despite the market performance, trading activity decreased sharply. Volume traded decreased by 93.06% to 230,253 units, and the total value of transactions decreased by 29.38% to N9.13m. A total of 37 deals were recorded during the session.