Equities: Santa rally pushes market cap to N19.24trn — all-time high

The nation’s bourse recorded new highs this week with the market capitalisation hitting an all-time high at N19.24 trillion.

At the end of trading on Friday, the all-share index (ASI) stood at 36,804.75 — the highest level since July 31, 2018, posting a 7.5 percent week-on-week gain — the largest in five weeks.

The increasingly negative real returns in the fixed income market and the end-of-year portfolio re-balancing by fund managers or Santa Rally further boosted the positive outlook for stocks.

Santa Claus Rally refers to the tendency for the stock market to rally over the last weeks of December into the New Year.

Source: Investing.com

Investor interest in Airtel Africa which was up 21 percent, and bargain hunting in Dangote Cement (+14.5%) and MTN Nigeria (+3.2%), following recent selloffs, were the primary drivers of the strong performance.

The Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns increased to 5.03 percent and 37.12percent, respectively.

Performance across sectors was positive with the insurance (+13.4%) index topping the gainers, followed by the industrial goods (+7.7%); banking (+5.1%); consumer goods (+3.1%) and oil & gas (+1.3%) indices.

A total turnover of 1.893 billion shares worth N17.647 billion in 20,660 deals were traded this week by investors on the floor of the Exchange, in contrast to a total of 2.265 billion shares valued at N20.990 billion that exchanged hands last week in 23,722 deals.

Analysts project that by next week, market will likely see more upbeat activities with intermittent profit taking that could slow down the uptrend.