By Peter OBIORA InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Nigerian stocks on Thursday gained 0.34 percent after a tight trading session and the visit of President Goodluck Jonathan to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) to commission the NSE X-Gen Trading Platform.

Cordros report said the market, supported by gains recorded by some blue-chips, saw the all-share index (ASI) closing at 30,973.80 points, while market capitalisation increased by N34.92 billion to close at N10.24 trillion.

With this development followed by sell-offs witnessed across the stock market yesterday, current market Year-to-Date (Y-t-D) returns stands at a negative 10.63 percent.

According to the report, three (3) out of the five (5) NSE Sectoral indices gained. “The rebound recorded by banks pushed the Banking Index to close with a 1.66 percent increase, while the Insurance and Industrial Goods indices followed suit with 1.12 percent and 0.10 percent gains respectively,2 Cordros affirmed.

On the contrary, the Consumers Goods Index led the decliners with a 0.47 percent decline, while the Oil/Gas Index also fell by 0.38 percent.

In terms of market breadth, at the end of the day’s session, the Nigerian equities market remained negative as 13 gainers and 28 losers were recorded. Cable manufacturer, Cutix Plc emerged top gainer with a gain of 0.12 kobo; while sugar producer, Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc led the losers chart with a loss of 0.34 kobo.

Turnover at the Nigerian bourse shows that volume traded depreciated by 35.74 percent to 333.44 million shares, valued at N4.36 trillion and traded in 4,252 deals.

The Cordros market update noted that a total of 82.83 million shares of oil marketing firm Oando Plc worth N1.49 billion exchanged hands in an off-market transaction.

“Trading will continue within a tight range tomorrow, with the ASI likely to earn another marginal gain,” the Cordros report affirmed.