Nigerian stocks index crashes below 40,000bps on sustained sell-offs
Adesola Afolabi was a businessamlive reporter and Head of Financial desk.
The Nigerian Stock Exchange-All Share Index (NSE-ASI) Thursday crashed below 40,000 basis points to 39,723.85 points on sustained profit taking.
The NSEASI, the performance indicator of the equities market, fell 1.06 percent while market capitalization, the growth indicator dropped N155 billion or 1.06 percent to close at N14.389 trillion.
The day’s performance thus extended the market bear run to the sixth consecutive session, which reduced market year-to-date (y-t-d) returns to 3.94 percent.
Based on data from the NSE, 8 stocks led by MRS oil (+10.10%) posted gains while 35 stocks led by Diamond Bank (-8.28%) posted declines.
All sectors closed in red with the consumer goods index posting the biggest loss of 1.79 percent, followed by the banking index, which fell 1.70 percent. The insurance index was next with a 1.10 percent decline, while the industrial and oil & gas indices fell 0.20 and 0.01 percent respectively.
The total volume of shares traded in 4,111 deals amounted to 256.4 million units. The shares were valued at N2.0 billion. This is in contrast to 266.7 million units traded in 3,721 deals on Wednesday, valued at N4.674 billion.
Top three traded stocks in volume terms were SOVRENINS, DIAMONDBANK and FIDELITYBANK.
SOVRENINS sold 53.5 million shares worth N13.4 million, Diamond Bank traded 29.6 million shares valued at N43.9 million and Fidelity exchanged 26.8 million shares worth N55.4 million.