Equities Investors Lose Over N178bn In Two Trading Sessions
…as All Share Index crash three-year low
By CHUKWUMA KELECHUKWU.
For investors at the Nigerian equities market, the two trading sessions of Monday, July 15 and Tuesday, July 16 saw a whopping N178.325billion chopped off their stocks portfolio valuation as frantic sale off continues.
While investors lost about N110billion on Monday, over N68billion was lost on Tuesday as 32 stocks recorded losses relative to 10 gainers.
Sustaining three months of bearish run, the market capitalization depreciated by N68.3billion to N13.7trillion while benchmark index declined by 0.49 percent to 29,712.90 points on Tuesday, the lowest since the 23rd of May, 2017. Consequently, the month-to-date and year-to-date losses worsened to 5.89 percent and 10.28 percent respectively.
With the listing of the shares of MTN Nigeria Plc and Airtel Africa Plc both of which added over N2.4trillion value to NSE equity capitalization, it was expected that the market performance indicators would have risen significantly, all things being equal.
However, investors who have chosen to play short term have been offloading their shares and moving over to the fixed income market, stockbrokers disclosed pointing out that investors are yet to determine direction of the market.
In a frantic effort to cut down losses, “Equities investors have been on a selling spree since beginning of last June in response to President Muhammadu Buhari’s inability to come up with clear cut policy direction. This may continue until government cabinet is constituted and policy direction unfolds roundly,” said a senior dealing member of the exchange.
More than two months after he declared winner of Nigeria’s disputed presidential election and sworn in for a second term, Buhari is still in the process of constituting a cabinet, a situation that has made risk averse investors stay off equities.
Last week, a total of 39 stocks were in a free fall just as 44 stocks depreciated in price value preceding week leaving all performance indices significantly lower (All-Share Index down by -2.41%) except for Market Capitalization which appreciated by +7.91% following the listing of Airtel Africa and NSE Banking Index which appreciated slightly.
Total volume of trades increased by 23.96 percent to 217.13 million units valued at NGN1.80 billion, higher than the volume recorded on Monday as panicking investors offloaded FBN Holdings shares (46.8m units), COURTVILLE (46.7m units) and UBA (24.1m units). As expected of a bear trade, value of stocks traded declined 16.1 percent to N1.8billion.
On the losers’ list, CAP (-10.00%) and CCNN (-10.00%) recorded the largest losses, while REDSTAREX (+9.81%) and LASACO (+9.68%) led the gainers’ list.
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