In the just concluded week, the Naira/USD exchange rate recovered (Naira appreciated) by 4.37% to close at N416.00/USD at the Investors and Exporters FX window as Bonny Light price, the Nigerian variant of crude oil, rose w-o-w by 3.80% to USD82.13 as of Thursday, January 6, 2022.
However, Naira depreciated against the greenback by 1.29% to close at N572.20/USD at the Parallel market.
At the Interbank Foreign Exchange market, NGN/USD closed flat at N430.00/USD amid CBN’s weekly injections of USD210 million: USD100 million was allocated to Wholesale Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS), USD55 million was allocated to Small and Medium Scale Enterprises and USD55 million was sold for invisibles.
Meanwhile, the Naira/USD exchange rate appreciated for all foreign exchange forward contracts. Notably, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months contracts fell by 0.50%, 0.93%, 0.86%, 1.21% and 1.33% to close at N416.78/USD, N419.37/USD, N422.70/USD, N432.40/USD and N442.85/USD respectively.
In line with analyst expectations, the domestic bourse closed positively in the first week of trading session in 2022 as the bullish momentum was chiefly driven by the newly listed BUAFOODS shares.
Notably, amid the strong demand from investors who were willing to own part of the 18 billion ordinary shares of BUAFOODS which was listed at N40.00, the share price appreciated to N53.20– gaining 33% within the space of three days.
Similarly, shares prices of CORNERST, WEMABANK and JAPAULGOLD also rose by 20%, 18% and 15% respectively. Hence, the All-Share Index rose w-o-w by 2.66% to close at 43,854.42 points. Also, market capitalization rose w-o-w by 5.97% to close at N23.63 trillion still on BUAFOODS listing. Similarly, the sector gauges mirrored the benchmark index as three of the five sub-indices tracked closed in green. .
Sub-indices were largely positive, especially the NGX Oil/Gas, NGX Banking and the NGX Industrial indices which rose by 2.68%, 0.78% and 0.34% respectively to close at 354.26 points, 409.22 points and 2,015.22 points respectively. However, the NGX Consumer Goods index and the NGX Insurance indices lost 0.93% and 0.87% to close at 196.26 points and 584.13 points respectively.
Meanwhile, market activity was upbeat as deals, volume and value of stocks traded ballooned by 53.45%, 103.67% and 346.78% 15,750 deals, to 2.03 billion units and N59.01 billion respectively as over N40 billion BUAFOODS shares exchanged hands.
In the new week, Analysts at Cowry Assets Management expect the equities market to remain upbeat as investors continue to position in readiness for dividend distributions in the first quarter of 2022.
“We also expect Naira to remain stable against the USD as the price of crude oil at the international market remains elevated following the agreement by OPEC+ producers to stick to their planned increase for February based on indications that Omicron would have only a mild impact on demand.”
