The last trading session before Christmas on the floor of the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited ended on a positive note on Friday, December 23, 2022.
This was due to the stock appreciating further by 0.42% at the close of trading, buoyed by sustained buying interest in large- and mid-cap stocks listed on the platform.
This consolidated the bulls’ grip on the stock market yesterday, with the market broad ending bullish, with 30 price gainers and 10 price losers, indicating very strong investor sentiment.
Geregu Power was the best performing stock during the session as it rose 10.00 percent to settle at N115.50, while Thomas Wyatt improved 9.46 percent to 81 Kobo. SCOA Nigeria increased in value by 9.09 per cent to 84 Kobo, Honeywell Flour appreciated by 8.96 per cent to N2.31 and Coronation Insurance gained 7.89 per cent to close at 41 Kobo.
The session’s worst-performing stock was Consolidated Hallmark Insurance, which lost 7.69 percent to finish at 60 Kobo. Chams was down 4.35 percent to 22 Kobo, Cornerstone Insurance was down 3.85 percent to 50 Kobo, Mutual Benefits was down 3.57 percent to 27 Kobo and International Breweries was down 2.22 percent to N4, 40.
A look at the performance of key market sectors showed that the consumer goods space witnessed profit-taking while the others posted bargain-hunting, with the bank counter rising 1.46 percent. The insurance sector appreciated 1.10 percent, the energy index grew 0.36 percent and the industrial goods sector improved 0.25 percent.
Consequently, the All-Share Index (ASI) closed higher by 206.66 points to 49,706.09 points from 49,499.43 points, while the market capitalization increased by N113 billion to N27.074 trillion from N26. 961 trillion.
The most active stock on Friday was UPDC REIT, which traded 50.4 million units, and was followed by Geregu Power, which traded 12.9 million units. UAC Nigeria traded 10.5 million units, MTN Nigeria sold 8.2 million units and Access Holdings traded 6.4 million units.
In total, investors traded 140.4 million shares worth 4 billion naira in 2,063 deals, in contrast to 132.6 million shares worth 3.1 billion naira traded in 2,999 deals the previous day. This implied that the volume of operations and the value of operations increased by 5.88% and 29.03%, respectively, while the number of operations decreased by 31.21%.