Sell pressure in WAPCO, GTB, Dangote Sugar pares Nigeria stock index 0.1%

Sell pressure in market bellwethers – WAPCO (-9.7%) GUARANTY (-0.7%) and DANGSUGAR (-3.4%) Wednesday pulled Nigerian stocks index down 0.1 percent to 32,108.30 points as market capitalisation fell N16.7 billion to 11.7 trillion. To this end, year-to-date (YTD) loss worsened to -16.0 percent.

However, activity level trended higher as volume and value traded rose 200.8 percent and 236.4 percent to 450.1 million and N9.4 billion respectively.

ZENITH (288.3m units), FBNH (41.0m units) and GUARANTY (N33.7m units) were top traded by volume while ZENITH (N6.9bn), GUARANTY (N1.3bn) and DANGCEM (N344.4m) were top traded stocks by value.

Performance across sectors was largely bearish as four of five indices closed in the red. The banking index was the sole gainer up 0.2 percent following buy interest in UBA (+2.6%) and ZENITH (+0.6%) despite marginal sell-offs in GUARANTY (-0.7%).

On the flipside, the Industrial Goods and Insurance indices led decliners, down 2.3 percent and 2.1 percent respectively due to price depreciation in WAPCO (-9.8%), NEM (5.3%) and CONTINSURE (-4.7%).

Similarly, the oil & gas and consumer goods indices shed 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent respectively following sustained sell pressures in SEPLAT (-0.3%),  DANGSUGAR (-3.4%) and  CHAMPION (-4.6%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 1.1x from 0.6x as 18 stocks advanced compared with 27 decliners. NIGERINS (10.0%), NPFMCRBK (+9.6%) and FIDSON (+8.9%) were today’s outperforming stocks while AIICO (-9.9%), WAPCO (-9.8%) and MBENEFIT (-9.8%) led laggards.

The bearish performance, according to analysts, would be sustained in the near term despite the improvement in market breadth.