Nigeria’s Equities Heading For Fifth Straight Weekly Loss
Nigeria’s stock market, on Thursday, continued on a downward slope, recording four straight weekly sessions of losses as sell pressure persisted on the domestic bourse.
The southward movement saw the Nigerian Exchange Limited All-Share Index and market capitalisation widen further by 0.30 per cent to close at 52,815.78 basis points and N28.47 trillion respectively.
At the close of the day’s trading, investors lost N85.38 billion, which put the total loss since the week’s trading at N684 billion. This has not only eroded the gains of the past weeks but has also dragged the index down away from the N29 trillion mark.
The year-to-date return of the ASI and market cap stood at 23.64 per cent and 27.70 per cent respectively.
Notable stocks whose share prices fell during the intra-day trading included Royal Exchange(-10.00%), Champion Breweries(-8.63%), FCMB Group, International Breweries(-5.66%), Nigerian Breweries(-4.65%), Eterna(-2.96%), FBN Holdings(-2.20%), Zenith Bank(-1.92%), United Bank for Africa(-1.90%), Cordova(-0.33%), Guaranty Trust Holding Company(-0.33%), and Airtel Africa(-0.06%).
Royal Exchange led the losers’ table, losing 0.1k to close at 0.90k; Champion lost 0.34k to close at N3.60; FCMB dropped 0.23k to close at N3.27, and International Breweries shed -0.45 to close at N7.50.
Although the market turnover increased to N4.03 billion from N3.59 billion, however, the market breadth was negative at 0.46x, as 12 stocks advanced against 26 stocks that declined, while 72 stocks remained unchanged.
Meanwhile, the gainers’ table was led by Ellah Lakes, which gained 0.3k to close at N3.42. PZ Cussons Nigeria followed, gaining N1.1 to close at N12.60, while Sovereign Trust Insurance and Nigerian Aviation Handling Co recorded a gain of 0.02k and 0.6k to close at 0.26k and N7.82 respectively.
FBNH topped the day’s trading with a total volume of 74.66 million shares, valued at N836.14 million, but lost 0.25k to close at N11.10.
Sectoral performance was largely negative as the banking, insurance, consumer goods, oil and gas and industrial indices declined by 0.97 per cent, 0.60 per cent, 1.76 per cent, 0.07 per cent and 0.02 per cent respectively close at 420.35bps, 179.25bps, 640.84bps, 546.10bps and 2,193.91bps.
Market activity was mixed as the volume of stocks traded fell by 7.08 per cent to 274.43 million units, while the value of stocks traded increased by 12.20 per cent to N4.03 billion.
Comments are closed.