A quiet week, a loud September coming.

Quick context before we get into it. This was a "rest before the noise" kinda week. The market got quieter on the surface; volume halved, the ASI eased back, and Painting giants we'd been watching over the past few weeks have finally cracked, but underneath, the country had three of the loudest stories of 2026 line up for the same month.

CBN held rates because inflation won't sit still. Banks and Aradel posted serious numbers. And September is now circled in red ink for everyone watching Nigerian markets.

Pour yourself something and take notes.

The naira gave up a little ground this week, but in a really calm way. At the official window (NFEM), we closed Friday at a weighted-average rate of ₦1,375.46/$, up from ₦1,371.04 the previous Friday. That's a move of +₦4.42, or roughly 0.32% weaker. The other currencies all moved in the same direction, just at different speeds.

Here's what each currency looked like at the close on Friday:

The pound was the standout, strengthening more than a full per cent against the naira this week, which is more a story about the pound being strong globally than the naira specifically weakening. If you've been planning to send money to the UK, this week was a slightly more expensive one than last.

External reserves are basically the country's dollar savings account, the foreign currency the Central Bank keeps so it can pay for imports and steady the naira when needed. Liquid reserves are the slice of that the CBN can actually reach quickly, like the part of your savings that's in your account versus locked away in a fixed deposit.

This week, the savings account got bigger. Gross reserves rose from $48.575bn last Friday to $48.891bn thats a +$316m in five trading days, or about +0.65% invrease.

Here's the detail that actually matters: gross reserves have now risen for ten straight trading days. The last day the reserves declined was May 5. For context, the CBN's own MPC communique this week put gross reserves at $49.49bn as of May 15, which is higher than what shows up in the daily reserves file because the CBN's headline figure includes some longer-term positions our daily file doesn't capture. Either way, both numbers tell the same story: the savings account is building, not draining.

What this means in plain terms: the CBN isn't burning dollars to defend a stronger naira right now. They're letting the rate drift slightly while quietly accumulating foreign currency. That's a meaningfully different posture than a year ago, and it's the kind of "boring" trend that makes a market more attractive to outside money, which becomes very relevant later in this letter.

Okay, this is where the week gets fun.

The All-Share Index closed the week at 249,712.37, down 0.25% from last Friday. Market capitalisation slipped from ₦160.45tn to ₦160.077tn, a similar nudge down. None of that, on its own, is the story. The story is in what happened underneath the movements.

Last week, 74 stocks went up, and only 24 went down. This week, only 38 stocks went up, and 55 went down, a real flip in breadth. More than half the names that traded ended the week lower. Even though the headline index barely moved, most stocks had a tougher week than the average suggests.

The other big shift was activity. Total turnover came in at 3.875bn shares worth ₦161.76bn across 334,745 deals. Last week was 7.772bn shares worth ₦374.04bn. Volume cut roughly in half, value cut by more than half. People weren't running to the exits; they just weren't trading. Some of that is normal mid-month quiet, some of it is people waiting on the CBN Monetary Policy Rate (MPR) decision (which came in on Wednesday), and some of it is the general "let's see what the earnings say" pause that hits markets when several big names report in the same week.

Financial Services still dominated the action, accounting for 62.19% of total volume and 43.10% of value. The top three by volume were all banks again: Sterling Financial Holdings, Fidelity Bank, and Access Holdings, between them moving 1.092bn shares worth ₦19.53bn. Same Financial Services dominance story we keep telling, but worth noting, Sterling jumped into the top spot this week — a name that doesn't usually lead the volume table.

The Week's Big Winners 🚀

The Week's Losers 📉

Two patterns jump off the gainers’ list. First, three of the top five are publishers: Academy Press, University Press, and Learn Africa. That's WAEC and NECO exam season starting to show up in textbook demand, and the market noticed. Second, Oando popped +11.70%, along with Japaul Gold, giving you the energy story of the week without needing to look at the index.

The losers’ list has the bigger story, though. CAP Plc lost 14.85%, and Berger Paints lost 12.64%. If those names ring a bell, it's because we wrote about the Dulux/CAP paint rally back in Issue 6 — paint stocks had been one of the year's strangest hot trades. This week, that trade unwound. Two of the three biggest paint names on the exchange were among the week's worst-performing stocks. Sometimes the most fun rallies have the quietest exits.

Three other things worth knowing from the equities desk: Seplat went ex-dividend on Monday at ₦113.78/share, which is why the price ticked down; that's normal, not bad news. May & Baker and NPF Microfinance also went ex-dividend during the week. And Eterna Plc listed an additional 882m shares on Wednesday from its rights issue, a routine but meaningful expansion of its share count.

The stock market is divided into "sectors" — think of them as teams. When you examine how each team performed this week, the overall story becomes clear. 

Zooming out from individual stocks, here's how the big neighbourhoods of the market did.

🏦 Banking +1.11%: Banking was the green spot of the week, and the timing makes sense. Two big bank audited results landed on Monday — Fidelity Bank showed gross earnings of ₦1.52tn (up 45.6% year-on-year) and FCMB Group finally published its long-delayed FY2025 audited accounts: gross earnings ₦1.13tn (up 41.8%), pre-tax profit ₦200.91bn (up 80%), profit after tax ₦176.91bn (up 141.7%). When the two banks that report in the same week both show interest income up north of 40%, the sector index notices. UBA and Zenith also closed firmer, supporting the move.

🛢️ Oil & Gas +0.07%: Essentially flat at the index level, but the names underneath tell a livelier story. Oando jumped +11.70%, Japaul Gold added +14.37%, and Aradel released its earnings on Thursday — full year 2025 numbers showed revenue at ₦697.3bn (up ~20%) and net income at ₦397.93bn (up 54%). Seplat dragged a bit because of the ex-dividend adjustment, but if you strip that out, the sector quietly had one of its better weeks of the quarter.

🛒 Consumer Goods -0.84%: A mixed bag with a slight lean down. NASCON (salt) gave back ₦12 per share, Dangote Sugar shed ₦4, Cadbury lost ₦1.90, and Honeywell Flour eased ₦0.75. UACN, the diversified consumer name, dropped a full ₦10 to ₦189.95. Not a panic — more of a give-back after a strong April. Premium beverages like Nigerian Breweries and Guinness held steady.

☪️ Lotus Islamic II -0.34%: The Shariah-compliant basket was down lightly, in line with the broader market, but cushioned by its lower weighting to the worst-hit sectors. Worth remembering: Lotus II is still up 97.87% year-to-date, one of the strongest performers on the exchange in 2026.

🏗️ Industrial Goods -1.24%: Cooked, and the paint story is exactly why. CAP Plc fell 14.85%, and Berger Paints fell 12.64% in the same week — both of those names sit inside the Industrial Goods basket, and a double-digit fall from two component stocks is more than enough to drag the index. BUA Cement also gave back ₦15 to close at ₦420. Dangote Cement held flat. Lafarge actually rose. The damage was concentrated in paints, and it was meaningful.

🛡️ Insurance -1.77%: The week's worst-performing sector by some distance. Sovereign Trust Insurance alone shed 22.45%, the biggest single-stock decliner on the entire exchange. AXA Mansard, AIICO, Cornerstone, Linkage, Universal Insurance, Coronation Insurance and Veritas Kapital all closed lower. Insurance has been the laggard sector all year (it's only up 4.73% YTD versus the ASI's 60.47%), and this week's slide widens that gap further.

📊 Premium Board +0.33%: The premium board (where the heaviest, most liquid names sit — UBA, Zenith, MTN, Access, Dangote Cement, Lafarge, Seplat) closed slightly green, helped by Zenith (+₦3), Lafarge (+₦5) and UBA (+₦1). MTN and Dangote Cement held flat. Even with Seplat's ex-div adjustment, the basket survived.

Quick refresher first, because this corner of the market scares people off with jargon, and it really shouldn't. A bond is just a loan you give to a government or a company. They take your money, promise to pay you a fixed amount of interest (called the coupon) for a set number of years, and give you your money back at the end. That's it. It's the financial version of lending your cousin ₦100k and agreeing he pays you ₦5k every few months until he clears it, except governments are far more reliable than that one cousin.

This week, the CBN held its MPR meeting and held the rate at 26.50% this week, which is still very high by any historical standard, and that's why bond coupons in Nigeria still look generous.

Sukuk bonds dominated the action again — FGSUK2031S4 (the 13% FGN December 2031 Sukuk) led with ₦70.33m traded, followed by TAJ Sukuk Series 2 (₦39.45m) and FGSUK2033S6 (₦31.61m). If you're paying attention to Islamic-finance instruments, Sukuk continue to be where the demand is showing up. The NGX Sovereign Bond Index closed flat at 689.48, unchanged for the week.

The big bond market news for retail this week is that the April 2026 FGN Savings Bonds were officially listed on the NGX on Monday. Coupon rates: 13.082% for the 2-year (matures April 2028) and 14.082% for the 3-year (matures April 2029).

One thing to notice — coupons keep dropping month-on-month as the rate environment slowly cools. Each new monthly tranche of FGN Savings Bonds offers slightly less than the one before. Just useful context.

An ETP (Exchange Traded Product) is a basket of investments like stocks, bonds or even gold, that trades on the exchange like one share. You buy one unit, you get instant exposure to the whole basket.

On the ETP side, 5.98m units traded worth ₦815.90m in 7,876 deals — also lower than last week (7.66m units / ₦1.18bn). The two most-traded by value were the Vetiva Griffin 30 ETF (which tracks the NGX 30) at ₦163.38m and the Siaml ETF 40 at ₦111.52m. NewGold, the gold ETF, traded just 682 units, but those units alone moved ₦101.74m in value — gold remains expensive per unit and steady demand.

Three of the biggest things that can happen to the Nigerian capital market are all scheduled for September 2026, in the same window.

The Dangote Refinery IPO is officially targeting September. Aliko Dangote confirmed it this week (at least that’s what he said). Private placement demand is already at roughly $2bn, and Femi Otedola personally pledged $100m — he sold his entire Geregu Power stake to free up the cash. Internal valuation guidance is around $50bn, with up to 10% on offer. If those numbers hold, this would be the largest IPO in the history of African capital markets. Dangote's pitch is explicit: retail-first. His own words were, "We want it to be like when you buy Amazon or you buy Apple."

The FTSE Russell reclassification takes effect on Monday, September 21, 2026. That's the day Nigeria officially moves from "Unclassified" back to "Frontier Market" status — a designation we lost in September 2023 because of the FX backlog. The backlog is now cleared, repatriation works again, and that's what unlocked the upgrade. Practically, it means global passive funds that track the FTSE frontier indices will start allocating money to Nigerian stocks. The names that benefit most are the largest, most liquid ones — MTN Nigeria, Dangote Cement, GTCO, Zenith Bank.

Dangote Cement's London Stock Exchange dual listing is also targeted for September, alongside its existing NGX listing. That's a separate story from the refinery, but it puts a third major Dangote-related event into the same month. Stanbic IBTC Capital, Vetiva and FirstCap are advising on the refinery; the London listing has its own set of advisers.

None of this guarantees anything for the rest of 2026. Calendars slip, markets surprise. But the three events together represent the most concentrated stretch of structural capital-markets activity Nigeria has seen in years. Worth knowing now, so it doesn't feel sudden when it arrives.

Check out our ranking of the top-performing Funds and Funds managers in Nigeria as of April 24^th 2026.

If you found this useful, the kindest thing you can do is forward it to one specific person who'd want to know what's happening in the Nigerian market, a cousin who keeps asking about the Dangote IPO, a colleague who's been thinking about Sukuk, or a friend who wants to take control of their finances. One reader at a time is how we grow.

Until next Saturday

Stay patient. Stay diversified. Stay learning — The NairaNote Team ✌️

Data sourced from: Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), SEC Nigeria, Debt Management Office (DMO), and verified financial news outlets. This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always do your own research or consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.