NairaNote - Week in Markets

Eid Mubarak! Hope the celebrations were bountiful and the salah meat was plenty, and as for the Arsenal fans, let it all work out 🎶.

Let’s get into the week. The Exchange kept banker's hours this week (three trading days, courtesy of Eid), but those three days had teeth: more deals per day, more naira per day, more chest puffing from oil names than the full week before. A market on bankers’ hours is best paired with whatever the oil sector was drinking. Grab a chapman, pull out a notepad, let's get into it.

The naira kept its cool this week

If you were checking the dollar rate every morning, hoping to catch a story, this week didn't give you one. The official market closed Friday at ₦1,374.75 per dollar, basically where it started Friday last week. Pound? Also flat. The story was the euro and yuan, both up about 0.3% and 0.4% in naira terms.

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

External reserves are Nigeria's emergency savings — the foreign currency we hold for paying imports, defending the naira, or settling debts. A higher number means more room for the CBN to act without panic.

Gross reserves: $49.342B (vs $48.983B last Friday)

First time crossing $49 billion in May. The "blocked" portion (funds tied up in swap obligations) shrank from 1.40% to 1.39%, so the liquid, usable portion is healthier in composition too.

What this means in plain terms: The savings jar is getting fatter, and a bigger share of it is actually spendable. That's the central bank's room to let the naira find its own level instead of intervening every Tuesday.

ASI closed Friday at 250,385.47, up +0.27%. Year-to-date performance: +60.90%. Market cap: ₦160.51 trillion.

But of the stocks that actually moved, 51 went down, and only 34 went up — the headline hides a messier week.

Three trading days moved 2.398 billion shares worth ₦111.48 billion. That's smaller than last week's ₦161.76B, but last week had five days.

Financial Services led volume (69% of all shares). The three most-traded names: Fidelity Bank, Access Holdings, and The Initiates Plc — 38% of total volume between them.

The Week's Big Winners 🚀

The Week's Losers 📉

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. 

If this week were the Premier League weekend: oil winning away from home, banks losing in front of their own fans, insurance quietly grinding out a 1-0.

🛢️ Oil & Gas +2.53%

Our Star of the Week YtD: +123.94%

The undefeated champion of 2026 keeps doing its thing. Aradel +5.33%. At +124% YtD, ₦100,000 in an oil-sector ETF on 1 January is sitting at roughly ₦224,000 today.

🛡️ Insurance +1.41%

YtD: +6.20% · still the slowest sector of 2026

Four insurance names in the top-10 gainers — first sign of life all year. One good week doesn't undo five quiet months, but it's a start.

☪️ Lotus Islamic Index +0.97%

YtD: +99.78% · about to double on the year

The sharia-compliant basket (no interest-based finance, no alcohol, no gambling) leans heavily on Dangote Cement, BUA, Seplat, and Airtel. Quietly one of the best-performing baskets on the Exchange.

🏗️ Industrial Goods −0.05%

YtD: +115.74%

Effectively flat. Big anchors (Dangote Cement, BUA, Lafarge) didn't budge. The smaller names — CAP, Premier Paints — got hit 10% each.

🛒 Consumer Goods −1.52%

YtD: +23.37%

Dangote Sugar's rights-issue drop dragged the index. Unilever and PZ also slipped. Bright spots: NASCON +4.76% and Union Dicon +9.45%.

🏦 Banking −2.43%

The Drag YtD: +55.57%

Fidelity's −9.79% did most of the damage. GTCO −5.52%, Access −3.61%. After a phenomenal year, this looks like a breather, not a turn.

📊 NGX 30 +0.32%

YtD: +60.08% · in line with ASI

Tracks the 30 biggest names. Moved in line with the broader market — Premium Board (Dangote Cement, MTN, Seplat, etc.) edged down 0.18% on bank weakness.

The bond floor took a nap. Only 26 deals across the whole Exchange, ₦157M traded. The biggest single move: 22.60% FGN January 2035 — one deal worth nearly ₦60M, trading at a premium because that 22.60% coupon beats where rates are heading. A sukuk is the Islamic finance version of a bond — instead of interest, holders earn returns from shared ownership of underlying assets. The only corporate sukuk to trade this week was TAJ Sukuk Series 2 (20.5% coupon, ₦880K total).

Friday's news: the FGN reopened two bonds — 16.25% FGN APR 2037 (+477M units) and 22.60% FGN JAN 2035 (+138M units). Like a restaurant adding another batch of their bestselling jollof instead of writing a new menu.

ETPs: the lazy person's diversification

An ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) is one share that holds a whole basket of stocks. Instead of buying ten stocks separately, you buy one ETF that holds them all. This week, ₦569.77M moved through them.

Leaderboard:

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.