November 01, (THEWILL) – Nigeria’s equities market opened November trading Wednesday on a record bullish note.
Investors’ scramble for Airtel Africa drove the market capitalisation to an all-time high of N38.77 trillion against N38.03 trillion on the previous day’s trading.
This earned investors N739 billion gain with the NGX ASI rising above the 70,000 psychological mark, closing at 70,581.76 points (against 69,236.19 points the previous day) – the highest level on record.
The unusual surge drove the benchmark index 1.9% higher, bringing the Year-to-Date return to +37.7%.
Airtel Africa which opened N1,540.10 gained N154 to close at N1,694.10 (+.10.0%).
The total volume traded increased by 22.9% to 594.05 million units, valued at NGN10.79 billion, and exchanged in 7,294 deals.
UBA was the most traded stock by volume and value at 163.56 million units and NGN3.47 billion, respectively.
Analysing by sectors, the Insurance (+3.7%) and Banking (+2.2%) indices recorded gains, while the Industrial Goods and Oil & Gas indices closed flat.
The Consumer Goods (-0.1%) index was the sole loser of the day.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was positive (2.4x), as 37 tickers gained relative to 15 losers. Chams rose from N2.22 to N2.44, gaining N0.22 (+9.9%) to record the second most significant gains of the day, after Airtel Africa.
Conversely, Caverton lost -0.12 to close N1.53 against an opening price of N1.55 (-7.7%).
It was followed by Champion losing 0.25 to close at N3.40 against an opening price of N3.65 (-6.9%). Both topped the losers’ list.
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
