Market activities today on the Nigerian equities market closed on a positive note as the All-Share Index (ASI) appreciated by +0.11% to settle at 98,285.33 points. Today’s performance was majorly due to gains in consumer giant Nestle (+9.76%) as well as renewed investor’s interest in Zenith (+2.20%) MTNN (+0.22%) Fidelity (+3.49%), NGX Group (+5.67%) and GTCO (+0.13%). On the contrary, Transcorp (-3.88%), FBNH (-1.09%), Sterling (-6.25%), Custodian (-5.88%), UBA (-0.48%), Nascon (-2.78%) and Access (-0.29%) closed under water today.
Turnover was N5.1bln ($3.4mln), buoyed by trades block trades in GTCO involving mixed interest. The year-to-date return on the ASI rose to to +31.44%. Following the increase in the MPR by +150bps to 26.25% by the MPC, we anticipate a bit of passive stance by investors towards equities in favour of fixed income securities.