Nigerian stocks reverse earlier gains as sell pressure pares benchmark index 0.08%

Nigerian stocks Tuesday reversed gains of the previous trade as sell pressure on consumer goods counters – UNILEVER (-6.7%), INTBREW (-6.2%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-2.2%) – dragged benchmark index, the NSEASI, down by 8bps to 32,417.70 points while year-to-date (YTD) loss worsened to -15.2 percent.

The market had opened the week on a positive note as bargain hunting in banking stocks drove the All Share Index (ASI) 0.2 percent higher Monday.

Tuesday’s market performance thus pare market capitalisation by N9.9 billion to N11.8 trillion. However, activity level strengthened as volume and value traded rose 189.5 percent and 9.4 percent to 349.5 million units and N1.5 billion respectively.

Top traded stocks by volume were ROYALEX (231.7m), FCMB (26.2m), and GUARANTY (12.3m) while top traded stocks by value were GUARANTY (N450.2m), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (N159.7m) and DANGCEM (N155.4m).

Sector performance was also bearish as three of five major sectors closed in the red.

The consumer goods index led laggards as sell pressures in UNILEVER (-6.7%), INTBREW (-6.2%) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-2.2%) closed the index lower by 1.4 percent. The insurance and oil & gas indices fell 0.5 percent and 0.4 percent respectively as a result of losses in NEM (-3.5%), LINKASSURE (-8.6%) and OANDO (-2.9%).

On the flipside, the banking index led gainers as buying interest in GUARANTY (+1.2%) pulled the index 0.6 percent higher while the industrial goods index followed, up 0.1 percent following price appreciation in CAP (+5.5%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) decreased to 1.0x from 1.5x recorded previously as 20 stocks advanced against 21 decliners.

The best performing stocks for the day were CONERSTONE (+10.0%), CADBURY (+6.7%) and CAP (+6.7%) while FIRSTALU (-9.5%), RTBRISCOE (-9.5%) and NNFM (-9.2%) led losers.

Despite the bearish performance, analysts are anticipating a rebound in the next trading sessions “as we saw significant buy interest in banking stocks today, which we expect to be sustained throughout this week.”