EQUITIES
The local bourse traded with bearish sentiments in today’s session as profit-taking activities in MTNN (-3.6%) caused a 0.3% decline in the benchmark index to 102,836.35 points. Consequently, the Year-to-Date returns settled at -0.1%.
The total trading volume decreased by 10.3% to 394.82 million units, valued at NGN15.16 billion, and exchanged in 10,766 deals. ACCESSCORP was the most traded stock by volume at 91.99 million units, while GEREGU was the most traded stock by value at NGN5.18 billion.
Analysing by sectors, the Insurance (-0.9%), Consumer Goods (-0.3%), Industrial Goods (-0.2%), and Oil & Gas (-0.1%) indices declined, while the Banking (+0.6%) index was the sole gainer of the day.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was positive (1.0x), as 24 tickers gained relative to 23 losers. SCOA (+9.7%) and CADBURY (+9.7%) led the gainers, while MULTIVERSE (-9.9%) and MAYBAKER (-9.8%) recorded the highest losses of the day.
CURRENCY
The naira was flat at NGN1,552.58/USD at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM).
MONEY MARKET & FIXED INCOME
The overnight lending rate contracted by 54bps to 30.5% following inflows from FGN bond coupon payments (NGN73.39 billion).
Activities in the Treasury bills secondary market were bullish as the average yield declined by 2bps to 25.1%. Across the curve, the average yield declined at the short (-2bps), mid (-3bps), and long (-3bps) segments, driven by demand for the 92DTM (-2bps), 169DTM (-2bps), and 351DTM (-13bps) bills, respectively. Similarly, the average yield declined by 2bps to 28.4% in the OMO segment.
The FGN bond secondary market was bearish as the average yield expanded by 40bps to 20.4%. Across the benchmark curve, the average yield increased at the short (+5bps) and long (+84bps) ends, driven by sell pressures on the FEB-2028 (+16bps) and JAN-2042 (+136bps) bonds, respectively, while it declined at the mid (-4bps) segment driven by demand for the FEB-2031 (-12bps) bond.
