Market Rebounds: MTN, Dangote Cement Lead ₦402bn Gain

Investors on the Nigerian Exchange Limited witnessed a significant rebound, gaining approximately ₦402bn in Thursday’s trading session, recovering from the previous day’s loss of N139bn.

The positive upswing was fueled by optimistic sentiments, triggering increased demand for stocks such as MTN Nigeria (+4.58%), Dangote Cement (+2.20%), Zenith Bank (+0.53%), and PZ (+1.35%).

The All-Share Index surged by 0.99% to reach 74,502.58 points, marking a year-to-date gain of 45.37%. Similarly, the market capitalization rose by 0.99% to close at ₦40.769tn, establishing new record highs for the ASI and market cap on the exchange.

Thursday’s trading reported more gainers (37) than losers (27), with notable equities like Ikeja Hotel, Multiverse, Julius Berger, Industrial & Medical Gases Plc, and MCNichols Plc among the gainers.

Despite the overall gains, trading activity witnessed a notable decline. Total traded volume fell by 11.17% to 384.58 million units, and the total traded value saw a substantial decrease of 56.20% to ₦5.67b. The total number of deals also declined by 6.35% to 8,336 deals.

Sectoral performance remained positive, with the Insurance, Consumer Goods, Oil/Gas, and Industrial indexes experiencing gains of 2.07%, 0.11%, 0.02%, and 1.10%, respectively.

However, the Banking sector was the sole decliner across monitored indexes, experiencing a decline of 0.22%.

Jaiz Bank continued to dominate trading as the most traded security by volume for the second consecutive day, with 49.40 million units across 282 trades. Zenith Bank followed with 27.94 million units exchanged in 577 deals, Access Holdings Plc recorded 23.42 million units traded in 383 exchanges, VeritasKap had 21.69 million units traded in 71 deals, and Transcorp witnessed 19.40 million units of its shares traded in 460 exchanges.

In terms of traded value, Zenith Bank led at ₦1.06bn, followed by MTN Nigeria with ₦792.51m, AccessCorp with ₦539.24m, United Bank for Africa with ₦367.411m, and Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc with ₦291.16m.

Analysts anticipate a positive trend for the week, expecting investors to engage in profit-taking and bargain-hunting for dividend-paying stocks, driven by sector rotation and portfolio rebalancing.