The Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) witnessed a positive opening to the week in the equities market, with investors accumulating gains of over N534 billion.

The NGX-All Share Index (ASI), an additional indicator of the stock market, made a notable gain of 1.6%, reaching 61,949.24 points. This increase was primarily driven by the buying interest in several stocks, including MTN Nigeria, which rose by 1.7%, as well as Stanbic IBTC and Access Corporation, which experienced significant jumps of 9.3% and 9.9%, respectively.

As a result, the Year-to-Date (YtD) return saw a rise from 19.0% on Friday to 20.9%, while the market capitalization showed improvement with an increase of N534.0 billion, reaching a closing value of N33.7 trillion.

The activity level displayed a mixed trend, with the volume of transactions witnessing a 20.8% increase to 1.2 billion units, while the value traded experienced a 12.0% dip, amounting to N14.1 billion.

In terms of sectoral analysis, all six indices within our purview demonstrated positive performance, recording gains. Leading the way, the Banking and Insurance indices showed significant advancement, with increases of 6.8% and 1.8% respectively. This growth was driven by price appreciation in Zenith Bank (2.9%), Fidelity Bank (10.0%), and MANSARD (4.6%). In the trailing positions, the Oil & Gas and AFR-ICT indices experienced marginal gains of 1.5% and 0.9% respectively, primarily influenced by price upticks in Conoil (6.0%), Eterna (10.0%), and MTN Nigeria (1.7%). Additionally, buying interest in Dangote Sugar resulted in a 3.0% increase in its price, while Unilever (7.4%) and PZ (4.6%) contributed to pushing the Consumer and Industrial Goods indices up by 0.5% and 4 basis points (bps) respectively.

According to analysts at Afrinvest Research, the outlook suggests that investor sentiment, as indicated by market breadth, has shown improvement, with a rise to 1.29 times from the previous session's 0.78 times. This improvement is reflected in the performance of 67 advancing stocks, 14 declining stocks, and 41 stocks closing flat. The analysts anticipate a continuation of buying activity in the current trading session (Tuesday), supported by the positive shift in investor sentiment.