EMEKA OKOROANYANWU
After recording four negative sessions, the Nigerian Stock Exchange All Share Index gained 82bps on Friday, erasing last week’s losses to a mere 1bp. The Industrial Goods sector (+172bps) recorded the most gains on Friday, thanks to upticks in CCNN (+450bps) and DANGCEM (+85bps). Similarly, the Banking sector (+137bps) and Consumer Goods sector (+40bps) closed positive after gains in GUARANTY (+373bps), UBA (+130bps), INTBREW (+811bps) and DANGFLOUR (+265bps) outweighed losses in UNITYBNK (-471bps) and PZ (-667%). Finally, the Oil & Gas (-36bps) sector was the sole loser today, following the decline in FO (-107bps).
Despite a positive close on Friday, the sentiment in the market still remained weak. On the back of this, it is expected seesaw trading this week, as the interplay between bargain hunting and sell-offs continues.
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The bond market is expected to start the week quiet, as investors await the MPC announcement on Tuesday and the bond auction scheduled for Wednesday. Also, we anticipated mild demand in the t-bills market in the absence of an OMO auction at week start.
The Naira depreciated ₦0.25 w/w at the Investors’ & Exporters’ I&E FX Window to settle at ₦360.43 and remained flat w/w at ₦358.50 against the dollar in the parallel market.
We expect the naira to remain largely stable across the various windows of the currency space as the CBN maintains interventions in the FX market.
