Early gains fail to hold as profit taking sees Nigerian stock index open week down 0.24%
Adesola Afolabi was a businessamlive reporter and Head of Financial desk.
It took just one last hour of investor profit taking on large counters to claw back early trading gains recorded on the Nigerian Stock Exchange as the week opened Monday forcing the market to shed 0.24 percent.
The equities market after shedding 0.24 percent settled at 32,048.18 points on sell-offs in Nigerian Breweries (-2.8%), Unilever (-6.0%) and UBA (-5.1%).
Market capitalisation also declined by N28.0 billion to N11.7 trillion while year-to-date loss worsened to -16.2 percent.
Activity level was weak with volume and value traded trending lower by 34.0 percent and 38.6 percent to 157.7 million units and N1.8 billion respectively.
The top traded stocks by volume were Access Bank (18.9m), FCMB (14.5m) and Guaranty Bank (N13.1m) while the top traded stocks by value were Guaranty Bank (N498.9m), PRESCO (N169.4m) and Zenith Bank (N165.7m).
Four of five major indices closed in the red. The consumer goods index depreciated the most, down 0.6 percent, following sell-offs in Nigerian Breweries (-2.8%) and Unilever (-6.0%). The industrial and banking indices trailed, as they shed 0.5 percent each due to sell pressures CCNN (-9.4%), WAPCO (-0.6%), UBA (-5.1%), Access Bank (-4.2%) and FBNH (-3.9%). Losses in Prestige Insurance (-8.9%) and Niger Insurance (-8.3%) dragged the insurance index lower by 0.5 percent.
On the flip side, the oil and gas index closed as the lone gainer, up 0.8 percent due to gains in Seplat Petroleum (+2.4%) following a positive nine month 2018 result released recently.
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) remained unchanged at 0.7x as 16 stocks appreciated against 24 decliners. UACN (+10.0%), CADBURY (+10.0%) and PRESCO (+9.9%) were the best performing stocks while the worst performing stocks were CCNN (-9.4%%), NNFM (-9.3%) and PRESTIGE (-9.3%).
Afrinvest analysts are of the view that bargain hunting would lift performance Tuesday, but maintained that near term the market outlook remain bearish.