- Dollar weakens on Monday as CBN defends Naira
Cash trading on the local bourse opened the week on a positive footing as the benchmark index closed higher by 0.05 percent to 98,177.88 points and buoyed by sentiments within the industrial goods index.
Also, the market capitalisation of listed equities surged by 0.05 percent to N55.54 trillion and driving the year to date return of the index up to 31.3 percent even as the exchange recorded fewer winners (13) as against the laggards (28) while investors’ wealth improved slightly by the sum of N29.35 billion.
Trading activity in the bourse on Monday was in the mix as the total traded volume soared by 188.2 percent to 405.66 million units while the total traded value tanked by 29.9 percent to N6.69 billion, despite a 21.7 percent upward movement in the total deals, to 8,439 trades in today’s session.
Elsewhere, sectoral performance was downbeat notably in the Banking, Insurance and Consumer Goods indexes, which recorded downward movements of 1.51 percent, 0.1 percent and 0.03 percent respectively, as investors dump CHAMPIONS, SOVRENINS, UBA, ZENITHBANK and HONYFLOUR.
Meanwhile, the Industrial goods and Oil & Gas indexes closed muted at the close of trading activities.
In terms of individual stocks performance, MCNICHOLS (10.00%), BERGER (9.72%), REGALINS (9.68%); CORNERST (5.00%), and UNITYBNK (3.12%) saw potential upward pricing, while CHAMPION (10.00%), SOVRENINS (9.76%), CHAMS (9.64%), RTBROSCOE (9.62%), and JAIZBANK (6.57%) experienced adverse price movements with material sell-offs.
Closing out the session, ACCESSCORP emerged as the most traded security by volume and value with 201.31 million units traded in 710 trades valued at N3.41 billion.
In the money market, liquidity crunch in the financial system pushed rates upward across the boards as most banks continue their search for liquidity for the funding obligations.
Consequently, the Overnight NIBOR trended upward by a significant 28 percentage points to 30.88 percent.
Also, the 1- month, 3-month, and 6-month NIBOR rates experienced northward movements to 23.54 percent, 24.71 percent, and 25.79 percent, respectively.
Key money market rates, such as the open repo rate (OPR) and overnight lending rate (OVN), saw modest movements to 30.25 percent and 31.08 percent as funds demands increase.
In the Nigerian Interbank Treasury Bills Yield (NITTY) space, rates across most tenor buckets moved southward, with decreases of 4, 25, and 8 percentage points for the 1-month, 3-month, and 12-month periods. The 6-month NITTY climbed by 36 percentage points.
Meanwhile, the secondary market for Nigerian Treasury Bills was mildly active and bullish, with predominant buy sentiments across the curve causing an 4bps decrease in the average T-bills yield to 20.93 percent.
In the bond market, secondary market activity for Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) Bonds was muted even as we saw investors dump the MAR25, JAN-26, and FEB-28 whose yields rose by 5bps, 3bps and 1bp respectively.
However, the average secondary market yield was unchanged from Friday’s close of 18.69 percent.
In the sovereign Eurobonds market, mild negative sentiment prevailed, particularly in the JAN-49 maturity, causing a marginal point increase in the average yield to 9.74 percent.
In the foreign exchange, the naira exhibited strength against the dollar, gaining by 1.89 percent to close at N1, 468.99 per dollar in the official market.
The parallel market saw a 0.14 percent appreciation, closing at an average of N1473 per dollar.
