At the close of the market today, the Equity Market ended trading session with an aggregate of 27,269.71 to capture a gain of 0.23% (compared to 27,205.95 and 0.75% gain recorded yesterday).
Diagnosis: Today’s ASI 0.23% gain was as a result of significant bargain activities in the Insurance, Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods stocks.
CONTINSURE, MANSARD & AFRICA PRUDENTIAL led the INSURANCE index to a gain of 1.80%.
FORTE Oil and ETERNA led the Oil & Gas index to a gain of 1.79%.
CUTIX and DANGCEM led the INDUSTRIAL GOODS index to a loss of 0.02%.
CADBURY, NB, FLOURMILL and GUINNESS led the CONSUMER GOODS index to a gain of 0.34%.
Further analysis shows an improvement of bargain sentiments in the Financial Services (Banking and Insurance). However, relatively higher losses in UBA, WEMA & Zenith (which make up 51.3% of the Banking index) led the Banking index to a loss of 0.24%.
The market breadth (No of Gainers/No of Losers) closed positive but declined compared to yesterday (1.44x vs. 2.27x). Nevertheless bargain hunting activities dominated pessimistic activities as 23 Gainers were recorded against 16 Losers on the trading chart.
The top 5 Gainers were FORTE (+12.00), NB (+2.69), FLOURMILL (+0.97), GUINNESS (+0.40) and GUARANTY (+0.40). The top 5 Losers were UNILEVER (-3.52), TOTAL (-3.01), 7UP (-0.50), PZ (-0.46) and ZENITH (-0.45).
5 most actively traded stocks were GUARANTY, ZENITH, FBNH, NB and OANDO
In terms of VOLUME, GUARANTY, TRANSCORP, ZENITH, FBNH and UBA topped the list of equities on the trading chart.
Furthermore, the Insurance index posted the strongest gain of 1.80%, followed by the Oil & Gas and Consumer Goods indices with gains of 1.79% and 0.34%, while the Banking and Industrial indices posted losses of 0.24% and 0.02%.