Nigeria equities market dives as sell-offs continue

The Nigerian stock market finished sharply lower by 0.9 percent Monday to continue the over a week bearish run. Sell-offs in big and mid caps brought down the NSEASI to 42,737.89 points from 43,127.92 points last Friday.

The bearish run thus extends to the sixth consecutive trading session on the day, aided by profit taking from a more than a month rally.

The market performance on the day saw year-to-date returns contracting to 11.8 percent from the over 13 percent achieved two weeks ago.

Accordingly, market capitalisation lost N139.6 billion in value to settle at N15.3 trillion.

The day’s market performance was dragged by sell pressure across board although losses in GUARANTY (-5.0%), ZENITH (-4.9%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-2.9%) were the major drags.

However, activity level was mixed as volume traded fell 6.3 percent to 517.4 million units while value traded appreciated 15.4 percent to N5.2 billion respectively.

Sector performance was negative as all indices trended southwards. The banking index declined the most, shedding 3.8 percent following losses in bellwether banking stocks – GUARANTY (-5.0%) and ZENITH (-4.9%).

The insurance index trailed, down 1.1 percent due to price depreciation in EQUITYASSURE (-8.3%), and AIICO (-8.2%) while the consumer goods index was dragged 0.9 percent lower by downtick in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-2.9%) and DANGSUGAR (-4.8%).

Similarly, the industrial goods and oil & gas indices slid 0.4 percent and 0.2 percent due to losses in WAPCO (-3.9%) and ETERNA (-9.7%) respectively.

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Market breadth (advance/decline ratio), which measures investor sentiment, improved slightly to 0.4x from the 0.3x recorded previously Friday as 13 stocks advanced against 36 stocks that declined.

The best performing stocks were PZ (+5.8%), BETAGLAS (+5.0%) and GLAXOSMITH (+5.0%) while ETERNA (-9.7%), EQUITYASSURE (-8.3%) and AIICO (-8.2%) were the worst performers.

“Although the bearish trend from last week was sustained today, we expect market performance to be boosted by bargain hunting in subsequent trading sessions,” analysts at Afrinvest noted.

In the NASD OTC Exchange, total volume and value traded stood at 340,240 units and N52.5 million respectively. The SDFCWAMCO and SDNDEP were the only instruments traded on the day.

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