EQUITIES
The domestic equities market extended its winning streak as gains in banking tickers, including GTCO (+7.6%), ZENITHBANK (+9.8%), UBA (+6.3%), STANBIC (+9.7%), and FIRSTHOLDCO (+9.9%) drove the All-Share Index higher by 1.8% to 128,967.08 points. Accordingly, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns settled higher at +7.5% and +25.3%, respectively.
The total volume of trades increased by 807.0% to 11.67 billion units, valued at NGN363.41 billion, and exchanged in 36,635 deals. FIRSTHOLDCO was the most traded stock by volume and value at 10.47 million units and NGN324.47 billion, respectively.
Sectoral performance was mixed as the Banking (+7.1%), Consumer Goods (+1.3%) and Industrial Goods (+1.2%) indices closed higher, while the Oil & Gas (-0.2%) and Insurance (-2.9%) indices declined.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative (0.9x), as 40 tickers gained relative to 43 losers. NESTLE (+10.0%) and OMATEK (+10.0%) led the gainers, while FTNCOCOA (-10.0%) and NPFMCRFBK (-10.0%) recorded the most significant losses of the day.
CURRENCY
The official FX rate depreciated by 0.3% to NGN1,532.00/USD.
MONEY MARKET & FIXED INCOME
The overnight lending rate contracted by 9bps to 32.6%, in the absence of any significant inflows into the system.
Proceedings in the Treasury bill secondary market were quiet, as the average yield remained unchanged at 18.4%. Across the curve, the average yield contracted at the short (-2bps) and mid (-2bps) segments, driven by the demand for the 85DTM (-2bps) and 176DTM (-2bps) bills, respectively, but expanded at the long (+1bp) end, due to sell pressures on the 323DTM (+85bps) bill. Meanwhile, the average yield contracted by 4bps to 24.6% in the OMO segment.
Elsewhere, the FGN bond secondary market traded on a bullish note, as the average yield contracted by 15bps to 16.5%. Across the benchmark curve, the average yield contracted at the short (-23bps), mid (-22bps) and long (-7bps) segments, driven by the demand for the FEB-2038 (-89bps), APR-2032 (-45bps) and JAN-2042 (-46bps) bonds, respectively.
