Jan 23 (AMBROSE OMORDION)

The equity market yesterday closed marginally up after opening lower in the early hour of the day trading till the last minute when highly capitalized stocks gained some value, pushing the market into green. The positive sentiment for stocks on the first trading of the week, while the all-important Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) began its two-day meeting means there must have been feelers and high hopes among watchers of the nation’s economic space, of which the capital market is an integral part, that rates will remain unchanged.
This begins to make more sense when you juxtapose it with the oncoming earnings season which would last from February to April, within which time discerning and smart investors would be rewarded with good returns on their investment at a time only a few companies had their dividend yields outperformed returns on Treasury Bills and other fixed income securities. These are investors who recorded return on their investment that is above 21% per annum (or 5.25% for 90days).
This is why funds might flow out of other investment windows for quick returns from the few value stocks that have strong numbers to support dividend payout, despite the weak macro-economic fundamentals that need to be addressed by the Federal Government and its agencies.
Meanwhile, the composite NSE All-Share Index gained 7.83 points to close at 26,231.37, after opening at 26,223.54 for the day, representing a flat growth of 0.03% on above average traded volume. Similarly, market capitalisation added N2.69 billion to close at N9.03 trillion from the opening value of N9.02 trillion, which equally represented 0.03% appreciation in value.
This marginally reduced the NSE’s ASI Year-to-Date negative returns to 2.39%, just like market capitalisation for the same period has fallen by N221.35 billion.
Market breadth for Monday remained positive and moderately strong as the number of advancers outpaced decliners in the ratio of 19:15 to continue the two day Bull Run in a row, just as the number of advancers increased on a high buy volume.
The volume and value of trades were up by 12.5% and 27.72% to 228.60 million shares and N2.58 billion respectively, from 203.19 million and N2.02 billion in the previous session. This was boosted by transactions in financial services sector and agribusiness stocks, especially in UBA, Access Bank, Presco, Diamond Bank and Zenith Bank that topped the activity chart as most traded equities by volume.
The benchmark index and few sectorial indices closed green, including NSE Banking, NSE Oil/Gas while others closed lower except for NSE Asem that was flat to close the day.
During the day’s trading, Daar Communication released it belated audited earnings report for 2015.
Also, at the end of the day’s transactions, UAC-Prop led the advancers table with 4.86% to close at N3.02, followed by Cutix with 4.40% to close at N1.66 while MayBaker led the decliners table with a loss of 4.90% to close at N0.97k, behind it was Honeywell Flour with 4.84% to close at N1.18
This trend may continue in today’s session but in the early hour of the trading market may be struggling for direction until the final outcome of the MPC becomes public knowledge. However, we would like to reiterate that investors should go for value equities, especially during this season that dividend payment is approaching.
NSEASI DAILY TIME FRAME

The index on a daily time frame is struggling to reverse within the bearish channel and symmetrical triangle chart pattern that supports continuation of trend, the increasing buy volume as at yesterday’s trading signals positive momentum and sentiment. A breakout of the dotted blue line will confirm uptrend.
The direction and trending ability of the market on a daily time frame is strong as ADX is above 20 and also trading above it 20 and 50-Day moving average.
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