Year to date equity market return increased to 27.9 percent, marginally up from 27.6 percent in the previous week, on account of price appreciation in market blue-chip companies. The All-Share Index advanced further to 65,558.91 points last week Friday up from 64,721.09 points in the week that ended August 18, 2023, amounting to a week to date gain of 837.82 points or 1.29 percent.
Trading volume throughout last week averaged 300 million units with average trading value in the region of N5 billion.
Traders executed 1.82 billion shares worth N29.29 billion in 31, 163 deals last week compared to 1.68 billion shares that were traded in the week that ended August 18 worth N29.407 billion in 29, 477 deals.
Expectedly, the financial services dominated the transactions, by volume and value as investors traded 936.685 million shares valued at N10.116 billion executed in 12,886 deals, which accounted for 51.68 percent of the market volume and 34.53 percent of the market value.
The conglomerates sub sector came second, with 461.589 million shares worth N2.33 billion in 3,451 deals. The consumer goods sector had 127.31 million shares of firms listed in this sub sector traded valued at N5.003 billion in 5, 792 deals.
Last week also witnessed the trading of 11,914 units of exchange traded products worth N3.98 million in 72 deals, in contrast to 30,336 units worth N2.039 million in 69 deals executed in the previous week.
Also, investors traded 103,716 units of bonds worth N107.32 million in 30 deals last week, far lower than the 292,995 units worth N294.933 million executed in 48 deals in the week that ended on August 18.
Sectoral indices sustained their positive growth, as it has been since the beginning of the year. NGX Banking, Pension Index, Insurance Index, AFR Bank Value Index, AFR Div Yield Index maintained between 50 percent to 90 percent returns as of August 25.
Others within the range of returns include NGX Meri Growth Index, Meri Value Index, Consumer Goods Index, Oil/Gas index, and NGX Growth Index.
For the coming week, analysts are predicting that the positive sentiment will be sustained, driven by bargain hunting by traders.
“Investor sentiment, as measured by market breadth, strengthened to 0.10x (from -0.36x in the prior session) as 30 stocks advanced, 24 declined, while 62 closed flat. In the coming week, we anticipate sustained positive momentum, driven by bargain opportunities,” Afrinvest said in note to investors.
