Bears hold sway with N49bn loss on sell pressure in GTBank, Access, FBN

The bears held sway on Wednesday as market investors lost N42.2 billion as a result of sell pressures seen in GTBank, Access Bank and First Bank Holdings, which drove the Nigerian stock market southward with a 0.22 percent decline to 43,349.90 points.

As a result, the NGX market capitalisation fell to N22.62 trillion from N22.67 trillion on Wednesday while the market year to date return weakened to 7.6 percent.

In the same vein, the level of market activity, which was dominated by the activities in the financial sector, faltered as total volume traded for the day fell 37.5 percent to 264.8 million units from 424 million units the previous day; and total value traded also tanked 47.8 percent to N6.1 billion from N11.65 billion on Tuesday.

Topping the chart of most traded stocks by volume were First Bank Holdings with 68.6 million units, International Breweries (36.7 million units), and GTBank (24.2 million units), while Nestle Nigeria (N3.0 billion), First Bank Holding (N856.2 million), and GTBank (N644.0 million) led the table as the most traded securities by value on Wednesday.

It was a bearish situation across the sectoral front as all sectoral indices closed in the same direction with the All-Share index, except for the industrial goods and ICT indices which closed unchanged from Tuesday’s close.

However, the insurance and consumer goods indices dipped by 0.8 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively, as a result of profit-taking on Mutual Benefits (-7.4%), Linkage Assurance (-3.8%), Dangote Sugar (-1.2%), and Flour Mills of Nigeria (-1.3%).

Likewise, the banking and oil & gas indices declined 0.4 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively, on the back of sell-offs in GTBank (-2.2%), Access Bank (-2.7%), and Ardova Plc (-5.4%).

Market breadth, which measures the investors’ sentiments, closed in favour of the bears as it weakened to 0.6x from 1.0x with 14 stocks advancing and 24 stocks declining. ABC Transport Company was the best performing stock during the session, and was followed by Chams Plc, Cutix Plc, Wema Bank, and Transnational Corporation, respectively.

From the rear of the chart, NEIMETH Pharmaceuticals shed the most weight to lead the laggards’ chart. It was followed by Japaul Gold, UNITY Bank, Consolidated Hallmark Insurance Plc, and Unilever Plc to complete the top losers’ chart.

Elsewhere, across the NASD OTC market, the NASD Securities Index closed flat at 744.58 basis points. This outing kept the market capitalisation at its previous day close of N615.16 billion as market activity dipped in the session with 3,058 shares traded in four deals as against a volume of 50,450 units traded in 12 deals in the previous session, a 96.20 percent decrease in volume of trades as executed deals dipped by 66.67 percent.

However, the value of those traded shares stood at N85,246 representing a 96.48 percent decrease from a value of N2.4 million recorded in the previous session.