Nigerian stocks down 1.5% on sell-offs in market big caps

Nigerian stocks closed negative Wednesday as losses in big caps dragged benchmark index, the NSEASI, down by 1.5 percent to settle at 42,952.70 points

Year-to-date (YTD) consequently moderated to 12.3 percent just as market capitalization lost N236.1 billion in value to close at N15.4 trillion.

The day’s bearish performance could be attributed to sell-offs in market bellwethers- DANGCEM (-3.6%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-3.4%) and GUARANTY (-1.9%).

Market activity level therefore weakened, as volume and value traded fell 39.3 percent and 13.1 percent to 270.3 million units and N5.2 billion respectively. The top trades by volume were ZENITH (64.6m), JAPAUL OIL (17.5m) and STERLING (16.9m) while ZENITH (N2.0bn), DANGCEM (N889.8m) and INTBREW (N375.9m) were the top traded stocks by value.

Performance across sectors was largely negative as all indices trended southwards save for the insurance index, which advanced 0.4 percent following price appreciation in HMARKINS (+6.1%), NEM (+5.0%) and LINKASSURE (+3.5%).

On the flipside, the industrial goods index led the laggards, down 1.8 percent on the back of losses recorded in DANGCEM (-3.6%) and CCNN (-3.3%). In the same vein, the banking index shed 0.9 percent as profit taking in GUARANTY (-1.9%) and ACCESS (-2.3%) weighed negatively on performance.

Also, the consumer goods index declined 0.7 percent following sell pressure in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-3.4%) and NESTLE (-0.4%) while losses in TOTAL (-3.9%) dragged the Oil & Gas index down 0.5 percent.

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) however strengthened slightly to 1.1x from 0.9x recorded the previous session consequent on 26 stocks advancing against 23 declining.

The top performing stocks were ETERNA (+10.2%), JAPAUL OIL (+8.0%) and HMARKINS (+6.1%) while UNITYBNK (-9.2%), WAPIC (-6.5%) and UNIC (-5.0%) were the worst performers.

“Although the market closed in the red, we anticipate renewed buying interest in the near term, in anticipation of positive corporate earnings releases,” said analysts at Afrinvest.

In the NASD OTC market, the SDNIPCOPLC, SDCAPDBETO, SDCSCSPLC, SDAFRILAND and SDFCWAMCO were the only stocks that traded, with a total volume and value of 10,985 units and N1,036,957 respectively.