Market Comment- 21.01.2021

Heavies lead the market… Selected top capitalised counters helped push the market further upwards in Thursday’s session. Conglomerate Meikles led the tide on a 17.99% surge to see it closing at $28.4756, with SeedCo Limited following on a 18.19% rise to $33.3333. Delta rose 15.34% to $30.5157, having traded an intra-day high of $31.7000, post the release of its third quarter trading update in which management reported a 77% increase in revenue in inflation adjusted terms for the quarter. Other Heavy cap gains were seen in Padenga which ticked up 11.36% to $21.1736, Cassava which rose 7.85% to $7.0737, CBZ that rebounded 6.75% to $96.0780 and Econet which added 6.22% to $9.2744. Twenty-six counters registered gains against five that lost ground while, four remained unchanged, leaving the market with a positive breadth. Meikles was the most liquid stock of the day as it propelled both the volumes and value aggregates after claiming 32.79% of the former and 62.64% of the latter. The other notable trade was in CBZ which contributed 12.11% of the turnover. Contrastingly, values of trades went down 85.89% to $165.32m while, volumes exchanged were 99.51% down at 11.09m shares from prior session. A net foreign outflow position was recorded as a mere $0.38m worth of inflows was registered against outflows of $112.95m. The primary All Share Index was 7.44% higher at 2975.27pts while, the Industrials put on 7.38% to close at 9934.82pts. The Top Ten Index was 7.60% firmer at $1877.55pts with the less active Mining Index ticking up 10.34% to end the session at 4155.85pts.