By Samuel Bankole
Nigeria’s equities rose sharply on Friday, gaining 1.65 percent with banking stocks driving the rally at the Nigerian Exchange Limited trading floor.
However, the local currency depreciated against the greenback at both the official foreign exchange window and the parallel market.
Also, the money market rates continue to decline as a result of huge liquidity in the market as the interbank rates index reflects the cash surfeit in the system.
At the equities market, the All Share Index increased by 1.65 percent to close at 63,040.41 points at the end of trading.
The market cap of equities listed on the NGX also rose to N34.326 trillion from N33.770 trillion as on the previous close.
The total volume traded closed with an exchange of 1,227.686 million units valued at N13.85 billion traded in 10,393 deals.
The market breadth was positive with 66 gainers as against 13 losers.
READ ALSO: CBN returns N115.45, $22.7 mln in failed transactions to bank customers in 10-yrs
The NGX 30 Index increased by 1.90 percent to close at 2,288.19 points as against 2,245.53 points at the previous close.
Market turnover closed with a traded volume of 609.20 million units. Presco and Fidelity were the key gainers, while Nigerian Breweries was the only loser.
Presco gained the maximum 10 percent, followed by Fidelity Bank with 9.98 percent gain, FCMB shares rose 9.92 percent, Stanbic IBTC rose 9.54 percent while Naascon shares gained 9.05 percent at the end of transactions.
Meanwhile, the naira depreciated to N776.90 to the dollar at the I&E forex window, against N762.63 to the greenback at the market the previous day.
The borrowing cost at commercial banks continued a southward trend on Friday, with the Overnight (O/N) rate declined by 0.04 percent to close at 1.25 percent as against the previous close of 1.29 percent.
The Open Repo (OPR) rate decreased by 0.07 percent to close at 0.86 percent compared to 0.93 percent on the previous day.
FMDQ Exchange has approved the quotation of Eunisell Limited’s N1.41 billion series 3 and N1.90 billion series 4 commercial papers under the company’s N10.00 billion commercial paper issuance programme on its platform.
(omayowa@globalfinancialdigest.com; Newsroom: +234 8033 964 138
