Mixed sentiment to trail Nigeria stocks this week

As investors prepare for trading in this new week, some will be taking position in banking stocks to qualify for interim dividend payments while other speculative investors will move to the Nigerian Bourse to take profit leveraging recent gains.

Nigeria’s stocks booked over N155billion gain last week amid renewed interest in the local bourse, despite pockets of profit taking activities.

The gains were supported by investors who bought some of the banking stocks to qualify for their interim dividends as proposed by the lenders in their recently published half-year (H1) financials.

Amid expectation of mixed trading sessions, the market looks good to record more positive closes than negatives.

Given that a number of fundamentally sound stocks trade below their fair values, market watchers expect value hunters to continue taking advantage of equities cheap valuations.

Following consecutive gains recorded in the week ended September 4, Vetiva Research analysts said they expect the stock market to trade mixed in this new week, “with continued bargain hunting in some counters and profit taking in others.”

Week-on-week (wow), the equities market of Africa’s largest economy closed in green as investors took advantage of cheap valuations of some banking, consumer goods, oil& gas and insurance stocks.

In the review trading week, NSE Banking Index increased by +2.76percent; NSE Oil & Gas Index (+3.65percent); NSE Insurance Index (+1.96percent); NSE Consumer Goods Index (+1.49percent), and NSE Industrial Index rose by +0.44percent.

The market’s benchmark performance indicator –the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) All Share Index (ASI) –increased by 1.17percent to close at 25,605.64 points as against week-open low of at 25,309.37 points while the market capitalisation of listed stocks increased from N13.203 trillion to N13.358trillion.