Last week, the Nigerian Stock Exchange Limited experienced a positive turnaround, marking its first weekly gain since losing N3.54 trillion in April 2024.
Data from NGX confirmed this development.
After six weeks of bearish trading, the equity market saw a gain of N812 billion as investors sought better yields in alternative markets.
This shift broke a bearish trend, particularly impacting the banking sector stocks, causing all recent entrants to the N1 trillion market capitalization club to lose their places as their market caps dwindled.
The benchmark index rose by 1.46% to reach 99,587.25 points for the week, driven by positive sentiments towards high-value stocks and established blue-chip companies with solid fundamentals.
Strong performance in the first quarter financial results by corporations and the commencement of the dividend earnings season led to a 1.46% rise in market capitalization, reaching N56.32 trillion within the week.
Consequently, the year-to-date return on market capitalization also increased to 33.2%.
A total of 1.941 billion shares, valued at N32.64 billion, were traded in 35,807 deals last week, compared to 1.839 billion shares worth N34.26bn traded in 37,528 deals the previous week.