A total of 31 stocks posted losses while 26 ended in the green at the close of trading at the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) today. Telecommunications firm, Legend Internet, led the decliners with a loss of N.60, which represents a loss of 10%. It is followed by Lotus Halal with a loss of N9.55 or 9.99%. Other top losers are NSL Technology, Cutix, and UAC of Nigeria, which lost N0.98, N0.35 and N6.95, respectively.

Top advancers for the day include information technology firm, NCR Nigeria which gained N1.05, representing an appreciation of 10%; SFR REIT which gained N27.40 or 9.99%; Berger Paints, N2.90 (9.06%); Beta Glass, N36.65 (8.16%) and Cadbury Nigeria, N4.65 (8.04%).

Despite the higher number of losers, the market still ended in the green. This is because of price gain by big caps such as GTCO which advanced by 2.0%, the energy giant, OANDO, which gained 5.0%, Beta Glass (8.2%) and Zenith Bank (0.9%). The gains by these big caps also helped to push the All-Share Index up by 0.2% to 141,761.36 points. With this, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns settled at +1.4% and +37.7%, respectively.

The total volume of trades rose by 2.3% to 605.02 million units, valued at NGN12.90 billion, and exchanged in 28,845 deals.

FCMB was the most traded stock by volume at 89.30 million units, while Lafarge Africa (WAPCO) was the most traded stock by value at NGN1.63 billion.

Sectoral performance was broadly positive as the Banking (+0.7%), Consumer Goods (+0.5%), Oil & Gas (+0.5%) and Industrial Goods (+0.1%) indices advanced, while the Insurance (-0.2%) index declined.