Last week, transactions in the shares of Transnational Corporation Plc, Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc, and Jaiz Bank Plc increased the volume of shares traded, with 36,286 deals totaling 1.8 billion shares worth N27.2 billion.
The top three equities traded 459.2 million shares for N3.3 billion in 3,645 transactions, accounting for 25.3% of total equity volume.
The financial services industry (measured by volume) dominated the sectoral activity chart with 904.9 million shares worth N8.5 billion traded in 12,883 transactions.
The sector accounted for 49.8% of the conglomerate industry’s total stock turnover, with 263.8 million shares worth N540.3 million traded in 1,651 transactions. With 238.9 million shares worth N5.8 billion traded in 7,635 transactions, the consumer goods industry came in third.
As a result, the All-Share Index (ASI) and market capitalisation both gained 4.3 percent this week, closing at 53,098.46 and N28.626 trillion, respectively.
Except for the NGX Insurance, NGX AFR Div Yield, and NGX Sovereign bond indices, which fell 1.92 percent, 2.82 percent, and 0.02 percent, respectively, while the NGX Asem index remained unchanged.
On the price movement chart, 50 stocks rose over the week, compared to 49 stocks the week before. Thirty-two stocks declined, unchanged from the previous week’s 32 stocks, while 74 stocks were unchanged lower than the previous week’s 75 stocks.
Given the market’s five-week winning streak, analysts projected a return of the bears through profit-taking in the near future.
“We see that investors are continuing their quest for commodity-backed equities with solid fundamentals and favourable returns above the inflation rate,” said Ambrose Omordion, Chief Research Officer of Investdata Consulting. On this note, we expect fixed income market participants to use high-yielding stocks as a hedge against rising inflation.
“However, we caution that profit-taking is causing market corrections, necessitating the use of your stop-loss effectively at this time.”
“This is even as the markup phase indicates that it will continue, especially when high-cap equities, which account for 70% of market capitalization, rise ahead of profits and scheduled dividend payments in May and June 2022.”
“We believe the bears are likely to book profit across most counters in the near term, given the market’s five-week bullish run,” Cordros Capital stated.
“As a result, we are seeing a more ‘choppy theme,’ as cautious trade takes center stage ahead of the MPC meeting later this month.”
“However, we recommend that investors only buy in fundamentally justifiable firms, given the negative economic story continues to be a substantial headwind for corporate earnings.”
According to a breakdown of last week’s trading, a total of 175,506 units of Exchange Exchanged Products worth N6.8 million were traded in 36 deals last week, compared to 147,708 units worth N3 million transacted in 19 deals the week before.
In addition, 43,629 units of bonds worth N48.5 million were traded in 33 transactions, compared to 13,800 units worth N14.4 million traded in seven transactions.
There were no trades reported in the derivatives section, according to the Exchange, and the level of open interest (OI) remained at two contracts.
