EQUITIES
The domestic equities market commenced the week’s trading on a bearish note as sell pressures on SEPLAT (-10.0%) and UBA (-10.0%) undermined market performance. Consequently, the NGX ASI declined by 0.5% to close at 97,709.38 points. As a result, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns printed -0.5% and +30.7%, respectively.
The total volume of trades increased by 27.5% to 439.10 million units, valued at NGN11.38 billion, and exchanged in 8,607 deals. NOTORE was the most traded stock by volume and value at 74.43 million units and NGN4.65 billion, respectively.
Performance across the sectors mirrored the overall market sentiment, as the Oil & Gas (-5.9%), Banking (-0.8%), Insurance (-0.6%) and Consumer Goods (-0.3%) indices posted losses while the Industrial Goods index closed flat.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative (0.8x), as 24 tickers lost relative to 18 gainers. SEPLAT (-10.0%) and PZ (-9.9%) topped the losers’ list, while TANTALIZER (+8.7%) and STERLINGNG (+5.4%) recorded the highest gains of the day.
CURRENCY
The naira depreciated by 0.8% to NGN1,478.11/USD at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM).
MONEY MARKET & FIXED INCOME
The overnight lending rate expanded by 64bps to 29.0%, in the absence of any significant funding pressure on the system.
Trading in the NTB secondary market was bullish, as the average yield contracted by 4bps to 22.4%. Across the curve, the average yield declined at the short (-4bps), mid (-3bps) and long (-4bps) segments driven by interest in the 10DTM (-6bps), 178DTM (-3bps) and 346DTM (-5bps) bills, respectively. Similarly, the average yield decreased by 3bps to 20.0% in the OMO segment.
Conversely, the FGN bond secondary market traded calmly, as the average yield inched higher by 1bp to 18.5%. Across the benchmark curve, the average yield expanded at the short (+2bps) end as players sold off the MAR-2025 (+5bps) bond but was flat at the mid and long segments.
