Nigerian stocks slide as index falls 1.3% on continued selloffs

The Nigerian equities market traded low Thursday despite analysts’ expectations of a rebound after 8th consecutive bearish trade. The benchmark index, the NSE All Share Index (ASI) fell 1.3 percent to 34,617.12 points, primarily due to losses in DANGCEM (-3.7%), UBA (-6.2%) and CUSTODIAN (-8.1%) as sell-pressure dictated market sentiments across board.

Consequently, year-to-date (YTD) loss dipped to -9.5 percent while market capitalization declined further by N167.1 billion to N12.6 trillion.

However, activity level increased as volume and value traded edged up 13.5 percent and 6.5 percent to 237.8 million units and N3.1billion respectively. The most traded stocks by volume were UBA (36.5m), GUARANTY (23.5m) and FBNH (21.0m) while GUARANTY (N892.4m), INTBREW (N461.8bn) and ZENITH (N398.4bn) led by value.

The oil & gas index was the only gainer of five major indices, up 0.5 percent due to price appreciation in ETERNA (+2.4%). On the other hand, the industrial goods index led the bearish sector performance, shedding 2.1 percent on the back of sell-offs in DANGCEM (-3.7%).

In the same vein, losses in UBA (-6.2%), ZENITH (-0.2%), CUSTODIAN (-8.1%) and CONTINSURE (-8.5%) dragged the banking and insurance indices 0.8 percent and 0.3 percent lower respectively. The consumer goods index also fell, down 0.1 percent on account of sell pressures in NASCON (-1.5%).

Investor sentiment, advance/decline ratio, strengthened albeit weak to 0.6x from 0.4x recorded the previous day as 17 stocks advanced against 29 that declined.

The best performers were EQUITYASSURE (+10.0%), PORTPOINT (+9.8%) and LINKASSURE (+8.8%) while AIRSERVICE (-10.0%), NEIMETH (-9.6%) and SKYE (-8.8%) were the worst performing stocks.

Despite the dominance of the bears, analysts are still hopeful that the market would soon turn around, especially on the improving investor sentiment observed Thursday.