Activities at Nigerian stock Exchange on Thursday, February, 22, 2018
EQUITIES
The bulls dominated the equities market for the third consecutive session, as investors hunted bargains, with the ASI appreciating by 0.24% to 42,258.78 points.
Accordingly, the Month-to-Date loss moderated to 4.70%, while the Year-to-Date gain improved to 10.50%.
The Oil & Gas (+0.70%), Industrial Goods (+0.17%), Banking (+0.71%) and Insurance (+0.26%) indices recorded gains, following demands for TOTAL (+4.78%), WAPCO (+0.49%), FBNH (+3.14%), and WAPIC (+4.92%) shares respectively. Meanwhile, profit taking in NB (-1.29%) caused the Consumer Goods (-0.34%) index to remain in the negative.
Market breadth turned positive for the first time in five sessions, with 24 gainers and 17 losers, led by JAPAULOIL (+5.41%) – which remained the toast of investors – and UNIC (-6.67%) shares respectively. Total volume of trades dropped by 40.01% to 342.10 million units, valued at NGN3.09 billion, and exchanged in 4,943 deals.
Our theme on the equities market remains positive, as investors continue to take position ahead of Q4-17 earnings releases, amidst strengthening macroeconomic fundamentals.
CURRENCY
The naira remained flat against the dollar at NGN362 in the parallel market, while it weakened by 0.07% to NGN360.66in the I&E FX window. Total turnover in the I&E FX window dropped by 12.6% to USD195.23 million, traded within the range of NGN355 to NGN361.30.
FIXED INCOME AND MONEY MARKET
The overnight lending rate dropped further by 308 bps to 10.17%, following inflow of matured OMO bills worth NGN56.43 billion. Meanwhile, an outflow of NGN67.65 billion was recorded via OMO sales.
Investors remained upbeat in the NTB market, as average yield dropped by 6 bps to 14.25%. Yields contracted across all ends of the curve – short (-9 bps), mid (-9 bps), and long (-2 bps)– owing to interests in the 7DTM (-72 bps), 112DTM (-76 bps), and 329DTM (-14 bps) bills respectively.
Conversely, proceedings remained bearish in the bond market, with average yield inching higher by 2 bps. Yields rose at the short (+9 bps) and mid (+7 bps) ends of the curve, while it fell at the long (-1 bp) segment, following selloffs of the JUN-2019 (+9 bps) and FEB-2020 (+11 bps) bonds, and demand for the MAR-2027 (+5 bps) bond respectively. Meanwhile, at yesterday’s bond auction, NGN27.18 billion (vs. NGN50 billion offered) and NGN52.44 billion (vs. NGN50 billion offered) of the 5-year and 10-year bonds were allotted at respective stop rates of 13.70% and 13.98%. The JUL 2021 bond was under subscribed, while the FEB-2028 bond was 1.57x oversubscribed.
