Nigerian stocks ended the last trading session on a near-stale mate. the All Share Index dropped by -0.08% to close at 39,331.61 index points as against the -0.40% plunge recorded on Thursday. Its Year-to-Date (YTD) returns currently stand at -2.33%.

• However, the market trading turnover on Friday printed positive as volume ticked up by +19.18% as against the +101.84% uptick recorded yesterday.
  MANSARD, ZENITHBANK, and FBNH were the most active to boost market turnover.
• The market breadth closed negative as MORISON led 20 Gainers as against 27 Losers topped by TRIPPLEG at the end of today’s session – an unimproved performance when compared with the previous outlook.

Top gainers

1. MORISON up 10.00% to close at N0.66
2. WAPCO up 9.90% to close at N22.2
3. NEM up 9.88% to close at N1.89
4. SKYAVN up 9.54% to close at N3.33
5. UNITYBNK up 8.96% to close at N0.73

Top losers

• TRIPPLEG down 10.00% to close at N0.72
• TRANSEXPR down 10.00% to close at N0.81
• UHOMREIT down 9.96% to close at N36.6
• CUTIX down 9.95% to close at N1.81
• SCOA down 9.90% to close at N2.64

Outlook

Nigerian Stocks ended the mid-week trading session on a slightly bearish note, amid soaring oil prices prevailing at the U.S trading session. At the time of writing this report, Brent crude was trading below $68.70/barrel.

• That being said, strong gains from WAPCO couldn’t stop Nigerian stocks from closing slightly red, as sell-offs intensified among medium capitalized stocks.
• Nairametrics envisages cautious buying, on the sentiments that recent price action shows further market correction as bargain hunters keep a tab on Nigerian macros.

Investors are anxiously waiting for the legal outcome filed against Ripple, creators of XRP, as the digital asset, recorded decent gains amid recent price market correction prevailing at the crypto-verse

Investors are holding firm on reports that revealed Christian Larsen, the Chairman of Ripple, has joined company CEO Brad Garlinghouse in passing a motion to dismiss the charges filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a court letter filed recently, the Chairman of Ripple’s attorneys provided facts detailing their reasons on why the legal case against the Ripple executive should be struck.

According to the letter, the SEC has not been able to prove its evidence that the Ripple top executive“knowingly or recklessly provided substantial assistance” towards the violation of Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1933.

What you should know: At press time, XRP price traded at $0.457053 with a daily trading volume of about $6 Billion. XRP is up 1.94% for the day.

The crypto asset is currently the 7th most valuable crypto with a market value of $20.7 billion.

That being said, its parent company, Ripple is currently piloting a private type of open-source, public XRP ledger that allows Central Banks to create and manage a digital currency—enabling global interoperability.

• Recall some months back, Ripple revealed to the public that it was informed by the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission that they had plans to sue the founders in a Federal civil court. Ripple and its top lieutenants further disclosed that they planned to fight such allegations.
• Ripple has however significantly upgraded on how it manages XRP, relinquishing control of the future development of XRP over to independent developers.

But it still holds about 6.4 billion XRP directly and has an additional 48 billion XRP held in an escrow from which it periodically sells to the public.

It has so far distributed 45 billion XRP since its debut. That is different from the ways in which bitcoin is created and distributed.