December 15, 2022/Cordros Report
EQUITIES
The Nigerian equities market remained in the bull territory as the NGX ASI notched a 0.5% gain to 49,233.02 points. Today’s performance was underpinned by bargain hunting in the top telecommunication player, MTNN (+2.9%). Accordingly, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date gains increased to +3.3% and +15.3%, respectively.
The total volume of trades increased by 153.0% to 222.78 million units, valued at NGN2.13 billion, and exchanged in 2,756 deals. STERLNBANK was the most traded stock by volume at 153.28 million units, while AIRTELAFRI was the most traded stock by value at NGN744.34 million.
Analysing by sectors, the Insurance (+1.1%), Banking (+0.7%), Oil & Gas (+0.6%), Consumer Goods (+0.2%) and Industrial Goods (+0.1%) indices mirroring the sentiments in the overall market, recorded gains.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was positive (2.9x), as 20 tickers gained relative to 7 losers. CAP (+9.9%) and ARDOVA (+9.5%) recorded the highest gains of the day, while GEREGU (-8.1%) and CHAMS (-4.4%) topped the losers list.
CURRENCY
The naira depreciated by 0.2% to close at NGN451.33/USD at the I&E window.
MONEY MARKET & FIXED INCOME
The overnight lending rate contracted by 508bps to 11.8%, in the absence of any significant pressure on the system.
Quiet trading persisted in the Nigerian Treasury Bills secondary market, as the average yield remained at 8.2%. However, the average yield pared by 1bp to 10.1% in the OMO segment.
Activities in the FGN bond secondary market were bullish, as the average yield contracted by 15bps to 13.5%. Across the benchmark curve, the average yield contracted at the short (-23bps) and long (-14bps) ends following buying interests on the FEB-2028 (-118bps) and APR-2037 (-72bps) bonds, respectively, but closed flat at the mid segment.
