Equities trading on the floor of The Nigerian Stock Exchange geared up as the lead performance pointer NSEASI gained 25Bpts and rounded up trade at 40,874.09 from 40,722.26. It was a mixed performance amongst the observed market indices as shown in the index movement table. Week to Date, the lead activities index stood below opening price by 13Bpts while total lost points in April is now 152Bpts. See the index movement table for details.
Value gained by the market capitalization of the listed equities during today’s trading activities was N36.781 billion, same as 25Bpts above the opening value. Meanwhile, trading activities for the day produced 18 advancers and 24 lagers. NSEASI Year to Date gain is now 6.61% while the Market Capitalization Year to Date gain stood at N1.154 trillion same as 8.49% above the year’s opening value.
Considering the prolonged sideway trend, one can assumed that most traders have lost trading direction after playing the various full year financial performances released by equities with December year end. It is our opinion that as the first quarter financials start reaching the market, directions will become clearer. We also believe that the release of the nation’s GDP figures for the first quarter of 2018 will go a long way in either dampening or boosting confidence around the market arena. Please note that our expectation of the nation’s performance index- GDP is positive.
We have observed that the market is currently struggling to build a support around its present trading range, in fact one could easily say it has entered a trading range; this is due to the fact that it has spent 10 trading days within a very narrow trading range (we observed performances within 4th April, 2018 and today 17th April, 2018). Meanwhile, considering the candlestick formation representing each day within this period, we can safely conclude that market still have more bearish traders.
In our opinion, buying in tranches despite the fairly stable market trend will keep traders in the recovery trend when it finally commence. Safe Trade.
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