Standings at Nigeria’s Stock Exchange on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018
EQUITIES
The equities market closed lower, with the All Share Index shedding 0.49% to 43,326.89 points, following selloffs in consumer goods stocks.
Accordingly, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns fell to -2.29% and 13.29% respectively.
The Consumer Goods (-1.98%) index recorded the largest loss, followed by the Insurance (-0.59%) and Banking (-0.11%) indices, as investors took profit in NESTLE (-5.00%), AIICO (-4.76%), and SKYBANK (-8.93%) shares respectively. On the flip side, the Oil & Gas (+0.61%) and Industrial Goods (+0.26%) indices closed in the green, driven by demands for FO (+4.90%) and DANGCEM (+0.38%) shares respectively.
Market breadth remained negative with 16 gainers and 26 losers, led by SKYEBANK (-8.93%) and UNITYBNK (+9.38%) shares respectively. Total volume of trades surged by 336.94% to 2.22 million units, valued at NGN7.50 billion (+63.98%), and exchanged in 5,468 deals.
We believe that still-positive market fundamentals and improving macroeconomic conditions suggest legroom for further gains.
CURRENCY
The USD/NGN remained flat at NGN363 in the parallel market, while it weakened by 0.05% to NGN360.40 in the Import and Export (I&E) FX window. Also, total turnover in the I&E FX window declined by 21.54% to USD166.58 million, consummated within the range of NGN358 to NGN361.50.
FIXED INCOME AND MONEY MARKET
The overnight lending rate declined for the first time this week, dropping 508 bps to 48%, as inflow of matured OMO bills worth NGN67.68 billion outweighed outflow of NGN23.42 billion via OMO sales.
Investors remained downbeat in the NTB market, as average yield rose by 13 bps to 14.30%. Yields expanded across all ends of the curve – short (+23 bps), mid (+16 bps), and long (+2 bps) – owing to selloffs of the 56 DTM (+102 bps), 112DTM (+61 bps), and 210DTM (+43 bps) bills respectively.
Conversely, proceedings turned bullish in the bond market, as average yield inched lower by 6 bps to 13.72%. Yield contraction at the mid (+15 bps) and long (+5 bps) ends of the curve, outweighed expansion at the short (+4 bps) segment, following demands for the FEB-2020 (-22 bps) and MAR-2036 (-14 bps) bonds, and the selloff of the JUN-2019 (+4 bps) bond respectively.
