Transactions maintain upbeat as indices rise by 0.17%

Equity transactions on the Nigerian Stock Exchange on Wednesday maintained an upbeat trend as the market indicators improved further by 0.17 per cent.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the market capitalisation closed higher at N10.075 trillion from the N10.058 trillion posted on Tuesday.

Equally, the All-Share Index increased by 49.96 points to close at 30,195.56, as against the 30,145.60 achieved on Tuesday.

Financial analysts attributed the growth to the fact that most prices of stocks had reduced so low that they had reached their “support level” and had no option than to start increasing again.

According to them, ‘support level’ is the level at which the price of stocks will reduce so low and it will rebound to start rising again.

They added that the situation could be sustained for long if other variables of the market like the naira value and oil prices stabilise.

NAN reports that Seplat maintained its leading position at the gainers’ table by N10, to close at N470 per share.

Julius Berger came second with N4.02 to close at N44, while UACN appreciated by N1.84 to close at N38.84 per share.

GTBank advanced by 50k to close at N23.20 and UBN gained 44k to close at N9.36 per share.

On the other hand, Forte Oil led the losers’ chart by N6.90, to close at N216.10 per share.

Nigerian Breweries trailed with a loss of N1.26 to close at N137.74, while Stanbic IBTC dropped 68k to close at N25.07 per share.

Lafarge Wapco dipped by 59k to close at N85.41, while Oando Oil lost 55k to close at N13.35 per share.

Similarly, the volume of shares traded increased by 33.33 per cent as a total of 369.819 million shares worth N4.49 billion were transacted by investors in 4,507 deals.

This was against the 277.361 million shares worth N3.79 billion traded in 4,401 dealson Tuesday.

FBN Holdings emerged the most traded stock, accounting for 57.46 million shares worth N445.97 million in 639 deals.

Access Bank followed with a total of 49.06 million shares valued N324.98 million in 293 deals, while GTBank exchanged 39.93 million shares worth N921.67 million in 380 deals.