Nigerian Bourse Closes Flat As NGX ASI Maintains Constant

Nigerian Bourse– The Nigerian equities market closed flat at the end of today’s session as the benchmark index remained relatively constant to close at 41,814.94 points.

Consequently, the YTD return closed flat at 3.83% as market capitalisation remained constant at ₦21.82 trillion.

The sectoral performance significantly strengthened as four of the five indices under coverage improved while the Oil & Gas index declined by 0.38% on OANDO (-1.98%). The Insurance index, the biggest gainer, increased by 0.51% on UNIVINSURE (+10.00%). The Banking, Industrial and Consumer Goods indices followed suit, rising by 0.21%, 0.06% and 0.04% on UBA (+1.20%), WAPCO (+1.21%) and INTBREW (+9.28%) respectively.

Investor sentiment weakened in today’s trading session, as market breadth decreased to 0.95x from 1.40x. This was illustrated by the advance of 21 stocks, led by UNIVINSURE (+10.00%) and UPL (+10.00%) and the decline of 22 stocks, led by ABCTRANS (-8.82%) and FTNCOCOA (-6.25%). Activity level weakened as total volume and value decreased by 47.63% and 26.63% as investors exchanged about 353.23 million units of shares worth over N5.57 billion.

We expect bullish momentum to return in the next trading session as the equities market still presents decent opportunities for investors chasing positive real returns on investments.

Fixed Income

There was relatively bullish sentiment across the bond yield curve as 3 of the 4 bond yields under coverage closed lower while the yield on the FGN-JAN-2026 bond paper closed flat. The yields on the FGN-APR-2023, FGN-APR-2024 and FGN-JUL-2030 bond papers were compressed by 2bps, 1bp and 3bps respectively.

Treasury bill yields for the 91 and 182-day papers closed flat at 3.76% and 4.59% respectively while the 364-day paper yield increased by 29bps to close at 7.16%.

We expect a further decline in yields in the next trading session on the back of huge demand from investors and the deliberate efforts of the DMO to reduce borrowing costs.

MARKET SNAPSHOT