Business
Easter Holidays Stall NSE Transactions
Transactions at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) have been suspended for two days due to Easter holidays that affected Friday and Monday trading.
The market was closed after Thursday trading. The transactions are expected to resume on Tuesday after the public holiday on Monday.
Meanwhile, investors on Thursday traded a total of 456.7 million shares valued at N3.6 billion, in 7,340 deals.
The volume of traded equities increased by 49.6 per cent, as the volume and value contrasted with 305.3 million shares, traded at N3.4 billion, which exchanged hands in 54,473 deals on Wednesday.
Also, All-Share Index (ASI) went up by 57.35 points or 0.2 per cent to close positively at 33,536.24 points compared to 33,468.89 points, posted at the exchange on Wednesday.
Market capitalisation gained N24 billion, to close positively at N10.73 trillion, as against N10.71 trillion traded by investors on Wednesday.
The market improvement was due to the price gain by blue chip companies.
New Gold led the gainers chart after making N11 gains per share to close at N2.466 per share.
Nestle and Total followed with N10 and N8.05 gains per share, respectively, closing at N950 and N169.05 per share, respectively.
Dangote cement and International Breweries on the other hand took the 1st and 2nd position on the losers table, losing 71k and 25k, respectively to close at N148.50 and N21.20 per share respectively.
However, the apex market regulator, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and NSE are optimistic that with the gradual return of investors’ confidence, there are signs that IPOs and new listings are expected to become major aspects of the Exchange in the current financial year 2013.