Nigeria’s equities market lost 2.6% of its value Wednesday as bearish trading makes a comeback after five straight days of bullish trading.
Analysts attributed the drop in value to profit taking as major banking stocks closed below their opening prices.
Investors lost N345.6 billion as market capitalization fell to N11.6 trillion from its Tuesday’s level of N11.9 trillion. Activity level however, improved as volume and value traded rose 29.7 percent and 52.1 percent to 508.7m units and N6.4bn respectively.
Analysts are however optimistic that the downward trend will not persist beyond the short term as they expect investor sentiment to remain largely driven by improvements in macroeconomic fundamentals, developments in the forex market and anticipated strong Q2 earnings.
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) All Share Index (ASI) depreciated by 2.6 percent to close at 33,477.89 basis points as against 0.71 percent appreciation recorded the previous day. The market’s Year-to-Date (YTD) returns currently stands at 24.5 percent
Performance across sectors was broadly bearish as all indices declined. The Industrial Goods index declined the most.
It was down by 3.6 percent due to price depreciation in DANGCEM (-4.2 percent) and WAPCO (-4.1 percent) while sustained profit taking in ZENITH (-4.0 percent) and GUARANTY (-2.5 percent) dragged the Banking index 2.9 percent southwards.
Similarly, the Insurance and Consumer Goods indices slid 1.4% and 1.1% respectively on account of losses in MANSARD (-3.2 percent) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-1.2 percent) while weaker sentiment towards OANDO (-5.0 percent) pulled the Oil & Gas index down 0.5 percent.
NEIMETH led 13 gainers against 37 losers which was topped by PZ at the end of the day’s session. Businessamlive.com notes that this was an unimproved performance when compared with previous outlook.
Market turnover closes positive as volume moved up by 29.69 percent against a depreciation of 18.70 percent recorded in the previous session.
ZENITHBANK, FIDELITY bank and GUARANTY bank were the most active to boost market turnover. ZENITHBANK and GUARANTY topped market value list.
Meanwhile, the market performance was dragged by profit taking in major banking stocks which include GUARANTY (-2.5 per cent), ZENITH (-4.0 per cent), ETI (-5.0 per cent), FBNH (-5.0 per cent) and ACESSS (-4.0 per cent) as well as other market heavyweights in the Industrial and Consumer Goods sector – DANGCEM (-4.2%), NESTLE (-1.1 percent) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-1.2 percent)
CUTIX leads the list of active stocks that recorded impressive volume spike at the end of today’s session.
