January 02, (THEWILL) – In the first trading day of the year, the Nigerian equities opened on a bright note as market capitalisation rose to N41.58 trillion.
This translates to N665.98 billion gain against the closing figure of N40.98 trillion on December 30, 2023.
Tuesday’s market capitalisation peak of N41.58 trillion and benchmark index gain of 1.63 percent having closed at 75,990.88 points against 74,773,77 points in the previous trading on December 30, 2022, represents the best performance in the 64 years of the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) which was established in 1960.
The positive performance was driven primarily by gains in telco heavy weight, Airtel Africa which opened N1887 and gained 5.99 percent to close at N2,000.
Bua Cement closed at N103 against N97 opening figure – gaining N5.15 percent after Tuesday’s trading.
Zenith Bank also played in the gainers’ league, yielding 0.91 percent to close at N39 against N38.65 it opened for the day’s trading.
These gains collectively took a robust posture to eclipse the losses in GTCO (-0.99 percent) after closing negative at N40.10 against N40.50 it opened on Tuesday, and Stanbic-IBTC (-8.11 percent) with closing price of N64 against N65.95 opening figure.
Another major loser was International Breweries (-2.08 percent) with closing price of N4.70 against N4.79 opening price.
As a result, year-to-date (YTD) return stood at 1.63 percent on market capitalisation gain ₦665.98 billion as the market closed at ₦41.58 trillion.
Analysis of today’s market activities showed trade turnover settled lower relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions down by 56.53 percent.
Market breadth closed positive at a 2.82-to-1 ratio with advancing issues outnumbering the declining ones.
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
