Nigerian bourse: Bearish sentiments persist in fourth consecutive trading session as stock prices fall 0.5%

The bullish sentiments, which rode the Nigerian equities market in the aftermath of the signing of the 2017 budget and release of Q2 earnings results by corporates, appears to have been overtaken by the bears as market traded negative in four straight trading sessions as at Wednesday, September 13, 2017.

Market performance Wednesday indicates that the Nigerian bourse’s all-share index shed 0.5 percent to close at 35,464.34 points with year-to-date gain retreating to 31.1 percent.

Accordingly market capitalization declined by N58.2 billion to settle at N12.1 trillion.

Performance across sectors was mixed as three of five indices closed in the green. The consumer goods index topped the gainers’ chart, up 1.1 percent on account of upticks in UNILEVER (+4.8%) and NESTLE (+3.5%).

This is ditto for the insurance and banking indices, which rose 0.5 percent and 0.2 percent on the back of gains in AIICO (+3.6%) and GUARANTY (+1.0%) respectively.

On the flip side, the oil & gas index closed 0.9 percent lower on account of declines in OANDO (-4.9%) and FORTE (-1.6%), while the industrial goods index slid 0.4 percent owing to price depreciation in WAPCO (-0.9%).

Wednesday’s market performance was influenced falling prices of ZENITH (-0.5%), STANBIC (-2.9%) and OANDO (-4.9%). This is just as activity level moderated with volume and value traded plunging 69.3 percent and 72.7 percent to settle at 114.7 million units and N1.6 billion respectively.

Investor sentiment remained soft today even as market breadth (advancers/decliners’ ratio) improved to 0.8x (from 0.6x recorded yesterday) on account of 16 advancing stocks against 20 decliners.

The best performers were UNILEVER (+4.8%), NEM (+4.8%) and CILEASING (+4.5%) while PRESCO (-5.0%) OANDO (-4.9%) and ETERNA (-4.7%) were the worst performers.

Analysts are optimistic of a near rebound in the market.

“While the equities market remains dominated by market participants booking profits, the improvement in market breadth suggests a likely near term rebound in performance,” said analysts at Afrinvest.