Equities market sustains bearish performance as lead index dips 0.14%
Adesola Afolabi was a businessamlive reporter and Head of Financial desk.
The equities market continued on a negative path Tuesday as the All Share Index (ASI) declined by 0.14% to settle at 31,082.32 points on the back of price depreciation in Nigerian Breweries (-6.7%), Nestle (-1.2%) and Dangote Cement (-0.3%).
Consequently, market capitalisation fell by N16.1 billion to settle at N11.6 trillion while year-to-date return weakened to -1.1 percent.
Despite the day’s performance analysts at Afrinvest advised investors to trade with cautious optimism in an investor’s note, released Tuesday evening.
Activity chart of transactions at the NSE however showed improvement as volume and value traded rose by 39.5 percent and 60.7 percent to 286.6 million units and N3.1 billion respectively.
The most traded stocks by volume were Access Bank (84.7m units), UBA (40.9m unit) and Zenith Bank (22.2m units) while the most traded stocks by value were Guaranty Trust Bank (N797.0m), Access Bank (N500.0m) and Zenith Bank (N482.9m).
Across sectors, performance was mixed as 3 of 5 indices trended southward. The Banking index rose 2.1 percent following price appreciation in Guaranty Trust Bank (+4.1%), ETI (+2.2%), Fidelity (+4.7%) while the Oil & Gas index appreciated 0.3 percent on the back of gains in Mobil (+2.4%).
The consumer goods index led losers, down 2 percent due to price depreciation in Nigerian Breweries (-6.7%) and Nestle (-1.2%). Similarly, the Insurance index fell 0.6 percent driven largely by declines in NEM Insurance (-2.1%), Mutual Benefit (-4.2%) and Niger Insurance (-4.6%). Finally, marginal loss in Dangote Cement (-0.3%) dragged the industrial Goods index by 0.1 percent.
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 0.9x from 0.6x recorded the previous session consequent on 17 stocks advancing against 18 that declined.
The top gainers for the day were McNichols (+10.0%), First Aluminium (+7.1%) and FCMB (+6.7%) while Presco (-9.3%), Ikeja Hotels (-9.1%) and Glaxosmithkline (-9.1%) led laggards.