Sustained sell-offs at the Nigerian equities market Tuesday extended bearish performance into the second trading session of the week as benchmark index, the NSEASI fell 0.8 percent to settle at 36,963.70 points.
Consequently the year-to-date (YTD) loss worsened to 3.3 percent, the lowest in six weeks. Market capitalization depreciated by N109.82 billion to close at N13.45 trillion.
Tuesday’s negative performance is traceable to losses in STANBIC (-7.7%), INTBREW (-7.4%) and GUARANTY (-1.5%).
Activity level was mixed as volume traded waned 32.9 percent to 203.6 million units while value traded rose 17.1 percent to N2.4billion.
The top traded stocks by volume were TRANSCORP (20.7m), ACCESS (19.5m) and ZENITH (15.4m) while GUARANTY (N434.4m), ZENITH (N368.7m) and NIGERIAN BREWERIES (N336.9m) were the top traded stocks by value.
Performance across sectors remained bearish as 4 of 5 indices closed southwards.
The industrial goods and oil & gas indices fell 2.4 percent and 1.3 percent as a result of losses in WAPCO (-8.0%) and MOBIL (-0.3%) respectively.
Similarly, the consumer goods and banking indices shed 1.2 percent and 0.9 percent respectively following sell-offs in INTBREW (-7.4%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-1.4%), PZ (-10.0%), GUARANTY (-1.5%), ZENITH (-0.6%) and ACCESS (-1.5%).
On the other hand, the insurance index was the lone gainer, inching 0.2 percent northwards on the back of buy interest in CUSTODIAN (+2.5%), CONTINSURE (+3.5%) and MBENEFIT (+5.9%).
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 0.4x from 0.3x recorded in the preceding session as 14 stocks advanced compared to 33 that declined.
The top performing stocks were SOVRENINS (+8.0%), WEMA (+7.9%) and JAPAULOIL (+6.5%) while CAPOIL (-10.0%), JBERGER (-10.0%) and GLAXOSMITH (-10.0%) were the worst performers.
Despite the day’s loss, investor sentiment improved slightly, albeit soft. Market analysts are envisaging that the sell offs would continue Wednesday, but see a possible rebound before the end of the week.
