Nigerian stocks trade lower on sell-offs in Dangote Cement, others

The Nigerian bourse sustained a downtrend at the end of Thursday’s trading session as sell-offs in Dangote Cement, a major cap, brought the all-share index down by 1.6 percent to 37,933.70 points.

To this end, year-to-date gain contracted to 41.2 percent despite market capitalization gaining N76.9 billion in value to settle at N13.5 trillion.

An appraisal of the day’s performance indicates that sell-offs in DANGCEM (-1.7%) contributed hugely as aside it, the market would have performed positively (+2.6%).

Market activity level was mixed as volume traded fell 10.7 percent to 289.3 million units while value traded inched 41.4 percent higher to N6.2 billion.

Performance across sectors was largely bearish as all indices save the oil & gas index closed in the red. The oil & gas index rose 3.8 percent largely on the back of a rally in SEPLAT (+7.7%).

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On the flip side, the industrial goods index led losers, down 3.1 percent on account of the dip in DANGCEM (-1.7%). The banking and insurance indices followed closely, falling 1.0 percent and 0.6 percent respectively as investors booked profit in ACCESS (-3.8%), UBN (-5.0%), CUSTODYINS (-4.8%) and NEM (-4.8%).

In the same vein, the consumer goods index was dragged 0.4 percent lower due to sell-offs in FLOURMILL (-9.7%) NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-0.5%) and DANGSUGAR (-0.9%).

Market breadth (advancers/decliners ratio), which measures investor sentiment, weakened further to 0.3x from the 0.8x recorded previously; 10 stocks advanced relative to 30 stocks that declined.

The top performers were SEPLAT (+7.7%), CAVERTON (+3.8%) and JBERGER (+3.7%) while FLOURMILL (-9.7%), UBN (-5.0%) and NEM (-4.8%) led laggards.

“With the ongoing profit taking in the equity market especially in banking and industrial Goods counters, we expect a rebound in market sentiment on the last trading day,” said analysts at Afrinvest.