After several days of continuous negative trading, the Nigerian stock market saw a 0.05 per cent rise in the All-Share Index and investors gained N26bn.
The local stock market has been experiencing a downward trend for several days, leading to major indexes falling below earlier milestones, because of selling off and declining interest.
Even with the release of corporate earnings and the announcement of a new banking sector recapitalisation exercise, it has not sparked renewed interest in the market.
By the end of Thursday’s trading, the All-Share index went up by 48 basis points to settle at 98,169.30 points.
Likewise, the market capitalisation increased by 0.05 per cent to reach N55.52tn.
The stocks of Zenith Bank Plc, Access Holdings and Transcorp were the major drivers of the market.
Companies such as Transcorp Hotels, Livestock, Tantalizer Plc, Sunu Assurance, and WAPIC contributed to today’s gains, with share price increases of 9.75 per cent, 9.42 per cent, 9.38 per cent, 7.44 per cent, and 6.15 per cent, respectively.
However, despite the overall upward trend, there were more losers (24) than gainers (16) on the exchange, indicating subdued trading activity.
Total deals, volume, and value all saw declines, dropping by 6.20 per cent, 24.90 per cent, and 31.95 per cent, amounting to 7,417 trades, 297.20 million units, and N6.52 billion, respectively.
Performance in the different sectors varied, with the banking and consumer goods indexes decreasing by 1.10 per cent and 0.05 per cent, while the Insurance index rose by 0.88 per cent.
The oil and gas and industrial goods indexes remained the same.
Zenith Bank was the most traded security by volume and value, with 48.49 million units valued at N1.77bn exchanged in 577 deals.
