Half-year earnings releases by listed companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange have failed to impress investors, as the local bourse, Wednesday, recorded bearish sentiments for the fourth consecutive trading session.
A review of equities trading activities showed the benchmark index, the Nigerian Stock Exchange All Share Index (NSEASI), shedding 0.09 percent to settle at 36,299.82 points while YTD loss worsened to -5.1 percent, lowest since 5th October 2017.
Consequently, market capitalization closed N12.4 billion lower to settle at N13.2 trillion.
The day’s negative performance is traceable to continuous sell-offs in GUARANTY (-0.4%), UBA (-1.0%) and OANDO (-4.4%).
Activity level also weakened as volume and value traded declined 54.1% and 67.5% to 113.9 million units and N0.7billion respectively.
The top traded stocks by volume were UBA (21.4m), SOVRENINS (14.1m) and TRANSCORP (8.4m) while UBA (N205.2m), ZENITH (N186.6m) and FBNH (N54.1m) were the top traded stocks by value.
Across sectors, performance was bearish as all 5 major sub-indices trended southwards. The oil & gas index led losers for the second consecutive day, down 1.0 percent, following profit taking in TOTAL (-2.7%) and ETERNA (-0.8%).
Similarly, the banking and insurance indices lost 0.2 percent apiece as we saw successive sell-offs in GUARANTY (-0.4%), UBA (-1.0%), MBENEFITS (-9.7%) and AIICO (-1.4%) drag both indices.
Furthermore, the consumer goods index lost 0.1 percent on the back of sell pressures in CHAMPION (-3.1%) and HONYFLOUR (-1.7%) while the industrial goods index shed 3 basis points arising from price depreciation in CUTIX (-5.9%) which neutralized gains in CCNN (+8.4%).
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) advanced to 1.2x from 1.1x recorded in the preceding session as 19 stocks advanced compared to 16 that declined.
The top performing stocks were UNITY (+9.3%), SOVRENINS (+8.7%) and NEIMETH (+8.5%) while MBENEFIT (-9.7%), NSLTECH (-9.1%) and UNIONDAC (-7.7%) were the worst performing stocks.
Equities market analysts at Afrinvest noted that weak activity level in the market as well as increased trading activity in penny stocks, is indicative of waning investor interest in bellwethers given their weak H1:2018 earnings.
On this note, the analysts projected a “further bearish performance tomorrow (Thursday) as the relative strength index which currently at 34.75, breaches the oversold threshold.”
