Nigerian equities market dips 0.44% as investors selloff blue chips
Adesola Afolabi was a businessamlive reporter and Head of Financial desk.
Investors embarked on sell offs across market bellwethers during the late trading hours of Wednesday, dragging the lead market indicator, the All-Share Index (ASI) southward by 0.44 percent.
The ASI thus settled at 35,358.94 points while year-to-date loss worsened to -7.5 percent.
Similarly, market capitalization dropped N57.4 billion reducing equities market overall value to N12.9 trillion.
The negative performance recorded Wednesday was largely due to losses in FBNH (-7.2%), DANGCEM (-0.4%) and UBA (-3.6%).
However, activity level was mixed as volume traded increased by 1.6 percent to 345.0 million units while value traded declined 58.8 percent to N2.3 billion.
The top traded stocks by volume were NEM (189.1m units), UBA (27.2m units) and TRANSCORP (21.7m units) while NEM (N540.1bn), ETI (N383.0bn) and GUARANTY (N350.2bn) were the top traded stocks for the day.
Performance across sectors was mixed as 2 of the 5 major sectoral indices under closed in the green.
The oil & gas index appreciated the most, up 0.5 percent due to gains in OANDO (+3.9%) and TOTAL (+1.1%), followed by the banking index (+0.2%), buoyed by price appreciation in ACCESS (+2.2%) and DIAMOND (+6.9%) which offset losses in UBA (-3.6%).
On the flipside, the industrial goods index declined the most, down 1.9% as sell offs in DANGCEM (-0.4%) and WAPCO (-5.6%) – currently at a 52-week low of N25.50 – dragged the index.
In the same vein, the insurance and consumer goods indices slid 0.3% and 0.1% on the back of sell pressures on STDINSURE (-9.5%) and UNILEVER (-2.0%) respectively.
Investor sentiment softened today as market breadth (advance/decline ratio) slid to 0.6x from 2.1x recorded yesterday following 17 stocks that advanced relative to 27 decliners.
The gainers’ chart was topped by PORTPAINT (+10.0%), REGALINS (+9.5%) and SKYEBANK (+7.7%) while LIVESTOCK (-10.0%), STDINSURE (-9.5%) and LASACO (-9.1%) depreciated the most.
“Despite the decline in the broader index, we expect the market to rebound in tomorrow’s trading session as investors hunt for bargain opportunities.
Our view is further supported by technical analysis, as the current 14-Day RSI (Relative Strength Index) of the market is 39.0 points which is closer to the oversold region,” opined Afrinvest research analysts.