On Friday, December 23, 2022, the last trading session before Christmas on the floor of the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited ended on a positive note.
This was due to continued buying interest in mid and large-cap stocks listed on the platform, which boosted the bourse by 0.42 percent at the close of trading.
This strengthened the bulls’ grip on the equity market yesterday, with the market breadth ending bullish, with 30 price gainers and 10 price losers, indicating very strong investor sentiment.
Geregu Power was the best-performing stock during the session, rising by 10% to N115.50, while Thomas Wyatt increased by 9.46% to 81 Kobo. SCOA Nigeria increased by 9.09 percent to 84 Kobo, Honeywell Flour increased by 8.96 percent to N2.31, and Coronation Insurance increased by 7.89 percent to 41 Kobo.
Consolidated Hallmark Insurance was the session’s worst performer, falling 7.69% to close at 60 Kobo. Chams fell 4.35 percent to N22.50, Cornerstone Insurance fell 3.85 percent to N50, Mutual Benefits fell 3.57 percent to N27, and International Breweries fell 2.22 percent to N4.40.
A look at the performance of the market’s key sectors revealed that the consumer goods sector saw profit-taking while the others saw bargain-hunting, with the banking counter rising by 1.46 percent. The insurance industry increased by 1.10 percent, the energy index increased by 0.36 percent, and the industrial goods industry increased by 0.25 percent.
As a result, the All-Share Index (ASI) closed 206.66 points higher at 49,706.09 points, up from 49,499.43 points, and market capitalisation increased by N113 billion to N27.074 trillion, up from N26.961 trillion.
On Friday, the most active stock was UPDC REIT, which traded 50.4 million units, followed by Geregu Power, which traded 12.9 million units. UAC Nigeria sold 10.5 million units, MTN Nigeria sold 8.2 million, and Access Holdings sold 6.4 million.
Investors traded 140.4 million stocks worth N4.0 billion in 2,063 transactions, compared to 132.6 million stocks worth N3.1 billion traded in 2,999 transactions the day before. This meant that the trading volume and trading value increased by 5.88% and 29.03%, respectively, while the number of transactions decreased by 31.21%.
