By Peter Egwuatu

FINANCIAL analysts have predicted a bullish run this week for the equities market amidst positive sentiment on the release of first half 2019, H1’19, companies’ results on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE.

Nigerian Stock Exchange NSE

The analysts further tipped Forte Oil (FO), Fidson Pharmaceuticals, CAP Plc and Dangote Cement as stocks to watch.

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Analysts at Cowry Asset Management Limited tipped CAP and Dangote Cement as stocks to watch with forecast Price Earnings Ratio at 2.85 and 15.56 respectively, while full year’s market price is forecast at N40.00 and N272.58 per share respectively.

They stated: “In the new week (this week) we expect domestic shares to rise as investors anticipate the announcements of the H1’19 corporate results.”

Reacting on the continuous bearish sentiment experienced in recent time, analysts at Cordros Capital Limited, a Lagos based investment firm, stated: “Our outlook for equities in the short to medium term remains conservative, amidst the absence of any catalyst to drive positive market returns.”

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Meanwhile, equities market, last week, remained weak as the All Share Index, ASI, extended losses from the previous weeks after declining by 2.3 percent Week-on-Week,    WoW, to close at 27,919.5 points. Except for Friday, the ASI closed negative on all trading sessions of the week. Thus, the Month-to-Date, MtD and Year-to-Date, YtD, losses worsened to 6.8 percent and 11.2 percent, respectively.

Reviewing the sectors performance, the Oil & Gas index at -5.7 percent was the worst performer, followed closely by the Industrial Goods (-5.2 percent ), Banking (-4.3 percent ), and Insurance (-3.8 percent) sectors. Performance of the Consumer Goods index at -9.5percent was flat.

Meanwhile, market activity remained weak as total deals and Naira value moderated by 3.90 percent and 3.24 percent to 15,774 deals and N13.39 billion respectively. However, the total transaction volumes increased by 9.82 percent to 1.09 billion shares.

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