August 24, 2020/Cordros Report

EQUITIES

Trading in the domestic bourse started the week positively, as buying interests in UNILEVER (+7.5%), GUARANTY (+0.4%) and ZENITHBANK (+0.3%) spurred a marginal gain in the market. Precisely, the ASI advanced by 0.03% to close at 25,229.12 points. Hence, the Month-to-Date gain increased to 2.2% while the Year-to-Date loss moderated to -6.0%.

The total volume of trades increased by 58.4% to 251.19 million units, valued at NGN2.36 billion and exchanged in 3,737 deals. TRANSCORP was the most traded stock by volume at 75.06 million units while ZENITHBANK was the most traded stock by value at NGN767.61 million.

On sectors, performance was mixed following gains in the Insurance (+0.8%) and Consumer Goods (+0.7%) indices, and losses in the Industrial Goods (-0.1%) and Banking (-0.01%) indices. The Oil & Gas index was flat.

Market sentiment, as measured by the market breadth, was flat (1.0x), as 15 tickers gained relative to 15 losers. UPL (+9.7%) and UNITYBNK (+9.6%) topped the gainers’ list while TRANSCORP (-8.2%) and ROYALEX (-7.7%) recorded the largest losses of the day.

CURRENCY

The naira was flat at the I&E window and parallel market at NGN386.00/USD and NGN477.00/USD, respectively.

MONEY MARKET & FIXED INCOME

The overnight lending rate expanded by 37bps to 3.0%, following outflows for CBN’s FX Invisibles & SMEs auction.
 
Trading in the NTB secondary market was mixed, as average yield was flat at 1.7%. On the other hand, average yield contracted by 14bps to 3.5% at the OMO secondary market.
 
Elsewhere, trading in the Treasury bond secondary market was bullish, as average yield contracted by 10bps to 7.8%. Across the benchmark curve, yield contracted at the short (-1bp), mid (-3bps) and long (-22bps) segments, due to sell-offs of the JAN-2022 (-2bps), JUL-2030 (-11bps) and MAR-2036 (-58bps) bonds, respectively.

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