ASI dips below 30,000 points as investors intensify sell offs in equities on political uncertainties
Adesola Afolabi was a businessamlive reporter and Head of Financial desk.
For the first time since May 2017, Nigeria’s equities market All Share Index (ASI) closed below the bench mark 30,000 points to settle at 29,336.80 points.
This is as investors intensify sell offs amidst heightened tensions of political uncertainty analysts at Afrinvest reiterated Wednesday.
The ASI plunged 2.3 percent worsening year to date returns to -6.7 percent while market capitalisation decreased by N260.8 billion to N10.9 trillion.
Price depreciation in heavy weight stocks triggered the day’s huge loss as Dangote Cement, the largest listed stock on the Nigerian Stock Exchange posted a whopping share price depreciation of 8.6 percent. Other heavy weights such as Guaranty Trust Bank that dropped 2.2 percent and Access bank that fell 5.9 percent similarly impacted the day’s losses.
An analysis of activity showed levels of trade ended mixed as volume traded increased 8.6 percent to 234.9 million units while value traded fell 15.9 percent lower to N2.2 billion.
The top traded stocks by volume were Diamond Bank with 54.7m units, Guaranty Trust Bank with 27.7m units and Zenith Bank with 25.8m units.
Top traded stocks by value were Guaranty Trust Bank which traded shares worth N865.7m. It was followed by Zenith Bank’s N526.3m worth of traded shares and FBN Holdings’ N152.1m worth of shares traded.
Performance across sector was mixed as 3 of 5 major indices closed in the red. The industrial goods index experienced a reversal, down 4.4 percent following sell offs in Dangote Cement (-8.6%). The insurance and banking indices were also lower by 3.1 percent and 0.3 percent respectively, following losses in Custodian and Allied Insurance (-5.9%), NEM
Conversely, the consumer goods and oil & gas indices ticked up 0.7 percent and 0.2 percent respectively, buoyed by gains in Flourmills (+4.7%), Cadbury (3.6%), Oando (+1.2%) and Mobil (+0.2%).
Investor sentiment, however improved, as market breadth (advance/decline ratio), strengthened to 0.7x from 0.5x recorded Tuesday with 14 advancing stocks against 19 that declined.
The best performers were Julius Berger (+10.0%), Unilever (+9.