Local Stock Market Records N116bn Gain

The Nigerian Exchange Limited continued its bullish trend on Wednesday as investors in the market gained N116 billion.

Investor sentiment remained very strong, buoyed by a positive market breadth index, which closed with 44 price gainers and 25 price losers.

Afromedia rose by 10.00 per cent on Wednesday to trade at 22 Kobo, eTranzact improved by 9.91 per cent to N5.88, FTN Cocoa increased by 9.88 per cent to N1.78, Neimeth also appreciated by 9.88 per cent to N1.78, and Unity Bank gained 9.76 per cent to close at N1.35.

On the flip side, Jaiz Bank declined by 10.00 per cent to N1.53, Meyer shed 9.88 per cent to settle at N2.19, Ikeja Hotel depreciated by 9.86 per cent to quote at N3.20, Tantalizers dropped 9.09 per cent to finish at 20 Kobo, and Cadbury Nigeria slumped by 9.04 per cent to N17.10.

A look at the activity chart showed that Universal Insurance was the busiest stock after it transacted 141.3 million units valued at N35.1 million, followed by GTCO, which exchanged 44.9 million units for N1.4 billion.

Further, Japaul traded 37.7 million shares valued at N23.3 million, UBA sold 31.7 million stocks for N362.0 million, and Access Holdings transacted 27.5 million equities worth N409.2 million.

At the close of transactions, a total of 643.0 million shares worth N6.1 billion exchanged hands in 7,806 deals compared with the 588.9 million shares worth N9.0 billion that exchanged hands a day earlier in 8,272 deals.

This implied that in the midweek trading day, the volume of trades went up by 9.19 per cent, the value of transactions depleted by 32.22 per cent, and the number of deals deflated by 5.63 per cent.