Strong appetite for BUA Cement shares on Friday pushed the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited out of bearish territory by 1.07 percent at the close of trading.
Cement stocks were seen being gobbled up by traders during the session, with holders refusing to let go, sending its value up 9.17 percent to N91.70 when trading ended at 2:30 a.m. p.m
Though not the biggest gainer, his performance yesterday saved the stock from bears, who were poised to maintain their grip on the market.
Prestige Assurance was the best performing stock on Friday as it appreciated 9.52 percent to 46 Kobo, Thomas Wyatt improved 9.09 percent to 48 Kobo, Coronation Insurance gained 8.82 percent to sell for 37 Kobo and Pharma Deko increased in value by 8.11 per cent to N2.00.
On the other hand, Unity Bank was the worst performing stock as it lost 9.26% to trade at 49 Kobo, SCOA Nigeria fell 9.20% to 79 Kobo, Japaul depreciated 6.90% to 27 Kobo , Livestock Feeds was down 4.31 percent at N1.11, and Chams was down 4.17 percent to trade at 23 Kobo.
trade publication reports that investor sentiment remained strong, as there were 17 price winners and 10 price losers, indicating positive market breadth.
However, yesterday the level of activity was low, as the volume of operations, the value and the number of operations decreased by 31.98%, 63.33% and 28.05%, respectively.
This was because traders traded 100.8 million shares worth N1.1 billion in 2,440 trades yesterday against 148.2 million shares worth N3 billion traded in 3,391 trades on Thursday.
Sterling Bank was the most active stock of the session, selling 34.2 million units, followed by GTCO, which traded 7.3 million units. Japaul traded 6.7 million units, while United Capital and Transcorp each traded 4.1 million units.
There was a general positive performance of the sectors during the session, since the industrial goods, insurance, banking, energy and consumer goods sectors closed with an increase of 4.33 percent, 1.11 percent, 0.73 percent. percent, 0.15 percent and 0.06 percent. percent, respectively.
As a result, the All-Share Index (ASI) improved by 516.79 points to 48,881.93 points from 48,365.14 points, while the market capitalization grew by N282 billion to N26.625 trillion from N26.343 trillion.