By Peter OBIORA InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Nigerian stocks on Tuesday recorded a marginal gain as all-share index (ASI) climbed up 0.27 percent to close at 29,584.00 points, while market capitalisation increased by N26.21 billion to close at N9.87 trillion.

With this development, current market Year-to-Date (Y-t-D) returns at the Nigerian bourse stands at 14.64 percent.

“As we predicted, the market seems to be heading for the south as the index gain lowered today, relative to yesterday. Notwithstanding, the gain recorded WtD depicts resilience given that it contradicts consensus expectation,” Cordros update said.

The report says two (2) out of the five (5) Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Sectoral indices climbed up. “The Banking index recorded the highest gain of 0.20 percent, while the Insurance index followed with a 0.10 percent appreciation,” Cordros added.

On the contrary, the Oil/Gas index had the worst performance, losing 1.90 percent, while the Industrial and Consumer Goods recorded slight losses of 0.03 percent and 0.02 percent respectively.

At the close business on the Nigerian bourse, market breadth sustained its momentum as 23 gainers and 17 losers were recorded. Africa’s top tier lender, United Bank for Africa Plc emerged top gainer with a gain of 0.27 kobo; while cement producer, Cement Company of Northern Nigeria Plc topped the losers chart with a loss of N1.01.

In terms of turnover, volume traded grew by 65.44 percent to 211.43 million shares, valued at N2.85 billion and traded in 3,808 deals.

“We expect the market to continue to trade within a narrow band, with a higher possibility of shedding points in subsequent sessions,” Cordros affirmed.