Dangote Cement, Zenith Bank lift NSE index, as market sustains positive trend

Activities on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange closed Wednesday on a positive note as investors gained N113 billion as the local bourse consolidated the previous day gains with 0.96%.

Upbeat transactions in in market heavy weights like DANGCEM and ZENITHBANK which respectively closed 2.60% and 4.54% higher helped push  the NSE-All Share Index to 37,259.65pts (relative to the previous level of 36,904.52pts).

At the close of trading, YtD return rose to +32.70% while WtD return pegged at +0.90%.  The uptbeat was largely driven by gains

Market breadth  however tempered at 1.22x relative to the previous 1.38x as 28 advancers against 23 decliners gave the bulls an upper hand.

The price movement chart displayed 30 gainers and 22 losers at the close of business today. Wema Bank led 30 other stocks on the gainers table by 9.4 per cent or N0.11kobo per share to close at N1.28kobo per share, IEI Nigeria Plc gained 8.1 per cent or N0.06 kobo to close at N0.80kobo and FO gained 4.8 per cent or N2.23 to close at N47.80kobo per share.

Transcorp Plc led on the losers' table by shedding 7.9 per cent or N0.14kobo per share to close at N1.63kobo per share, Continental Reinsurance lost five per cent or N0.06kobo to close at N1.14kobo per share and Port and Coat Nigeria Plc shed 4.9 per cent or N0.25kobo per share loss to close trading for the day at N4.81kobo per share.

Volume of market activity remains relatively flat though marginally positive by 1.52%. However, the value of transactions declined 19.74% compared to the previous level due to lower activity on the heavy cap stocks.

While volume of transactions were dominated by financial services counters, the banking, industrial and consumer goods stocks featured on the top 10 trades by value accounting for 73.41% of turnover.