EQUITIES:

• The Nigerian bourse halted the bearish trend of the last three sessions, as the All share index recorded a marginal gain of +0.07% to berth at 25,496.71pts, corresponding to a market capitalisation of c.N8.82trillion.
• Buying interest in GUARANTY (+35.90pts), NB (+34.63pts) and FBNH (+10.45pts) drove today’s marginal gain offsetting the decline in WAPCO (-34.57pts), UNILEVER (-19.28pts) and SEPLAT (-13.12pts).
• Market turnover however weakened as both volume and value traded declined by -38% and -35% to 247m units of stocks worth c.N1.25bn. Banking sector tickers led by FIDELITY and FCMB topped the volume chart, accounting for 77% of total volume.
• Performance of major sectoral indexes was however mixed as gains in Banking (+0.78%) and Consumer (+0.26%) trackers were countered by decline in Industrial (-2.26%) and Oil and gas  (-0.62%) trackers.
• TRANSEXPR (+4.60%) led the list of 18 gainers while UNILEVER (-5.00%) led the decliner chart comprising 17 stocks. Hence, market breadth index (+0.01x) closed positive.
• In the near term, we expect the equities market to remain volatile as closure of earning season and lack of positive catalyst would continue to drag market momentum. However, we advise investors to lengthen their horizon and gradually build position in quality names.
  

CURRENCY:

• Due to continued daily intervention sales by the CBN, the NGN remains stable at the interbank market to close at N306.10.  It equally closed relatively flat against the GBP and EUR to settle at N381.61 and N323.80 respectively.
• At the parallel market, the Naira closed flat at N410, N490 and N430 against the USD, GBP and EUR respectively.
• Going forward, we expect CBN’s continued intervention in the FX market to support the local currency in the near term.
  

FIXED INCOME:

• Amidst pressure on system liquidity from OMO and bond auction, money market rates spiked to 200% level as both OBB and OVN rates ended the session at 200% and 196.67% respectively. At today’s OMO auction, the CBN sold c.N2.9b worth of OMO bill to investors  at 18.6% stop rate. As at time of writing, NIBOR rates had yet to be published.
• We expect improvement in system liquidity from OMO maturity of c.N80bn hitting the system tomorrow. That said, we however expect the CBN to sell OMO bill to drain excess liquidity from the system.
• In response to squeeze on system liquidity, yields on FGN bonds expanded across tenors as the bond market was largely bearish today. Yields on the 5yr, 7yr and 10yr benchmark bonds expanded by 16bps, 5bps and 20bps to berth at 15.87%, 15.85% and 16.08% respectively.
• We expect  market direction in subsequent session to be influenced by expectation regarding the outcome of the bond auction and March inflation figure scheduled to be released tomorrow.
  

Below are key NSE statistics as at the end of trades:

NASD OTC pricelist for Wednesday 12^th of April 2017