Equity market performance decline on sustain sell pressures
Again, the performance of the local bourse was bearish last week as the benchmark All Share Index (ASI) shed 1.4% week on week to settle at 26,925.29 points while year to date ,YTD, loss worsened to -14.3%.
Largely, equity market has underperformed since early this year with investors’ fortune nose-diving from one trading day to another.
As a result of declined performance, investors lost N185.9 billion in value as market capitalisation fell to N13.1 trillion. The bearish performance in the past week was largely due to sustained losses in NESTLE (-10.0%), STANBIC (-3.8%) and ETI (-4.8%).
However, activity level strengthened as average volume and value rose 12.1% and 45.1% to 258.3 million units and N3.5 billion respectively.
Afrinvest provided that the top traded stocks by volume were GUARANTY (228.1million units), TRANSCORP (96.1 million units) and ZENITH (91.9 million units) while GUARANTY (N5.9 billion), MTNN (N1.9 billion) and DANGCEM (N1.7 billion) led by value.
Performance across sectors was bearish as 5 of 6 indices under Afrinvest analysts’ coverage trended southward week on week.
The Consumer Goods index led laggards, down 6.6% on the back of sustained sell pressures in UNILEVER (-12.8%) and NESTLE (-10.0%).
Trailing, the Industrial Goods index shed 4.2% on account of losses in WAPCO (-6.7%) and DANGCEM (-0.6%).
Similarly, the Oil & Gas and Banking indices lost 1.9% and 1.1% respectively as investors exited positions in OANDO (-9.5%), TOTAL (-7.8%), ETI (-17.2%) and STANBIC (-13.4%).
Profit taking in LAWUNION (-15.4%) and LASACO (-8.3%) dragged the Insurance index 0.7% lower.
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On the flip side, the AFR-ICT index emerged the lone gainer, up 1.8% as MTNN (+3.1%) buoyed performance.
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) marginally inched higher to 0.4x from 0.3x as 14 stocks advanced against 32 that declined.
The top performing stocks for the week were BOCGAS (+9.9%), UNIONDAC (+9.1%) and UNITY (+7.8%) while UACN (-18.2%), ETI (-17.2%) and LAWUNION (-15.4%) were the laggards.
Following the bearish performance this week, we expect sell pressures to dominate in the near-term given the generally negative mood and absence of catalyst to spur investor interest.
Equity market performance decline on sustain sell pressures
