Investors fortune decline as stock market drop by N141bn
Investors’ fortune has been further hit following N141 billion reduction in the value of equities listed on the floor of stock market.
Following price losses suffered by most blue-chip companies throughout last week, equity transactions on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Monday re-opened on a downward note, as market capitalization fell further by N141 billion with no market sector recorded positive sentiment.
The market breadth closed negative, recording 11 gainers and 30 losers.
It was recorded that the All Share Index (ASI) shed 363.37 absolute points, representing a decline of 1.26%. By the same token, the stock market capitalization decreased by N140.86 billion representing a dip of 1.30% to close at N10.70 trillion as the entire share capital (634,000,000 ordinary shares) of Newrest ASL was delisted from the daily official list of the Exchange yesterday.
Domestic market sustained its consecutive bearish performance from the previous week as the NSE All Share Index (ASI) shed 98 basis points (bps) to settle at 28,565.67 points due to sell-offs in NESTLE (-2.5%), GUARANTY (-3.1%) and STANBIC (-4.2%).
By the record of this latest market performance, year to date (YTD) loss worsened to -9.1%. Activity level was mixed as volume traded fell 8.7% to 214.7 million units while value traded rose 104.7% to N2.8 billion. The top traded stocks by volume were UACN (41.3 million units), GUARANTY (38.0 million units) and UBA (16.0 million units) while GUARANTY (N1.2 billion), UACN (N289.1 million) and ZENITH (N222.0 million) were the top traded stocks by value.
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Meanwhile, performance across sectors was equally bearish as all indices under Afrinvest analysts coverage closed in the red. The Banking and Insurance indices led decliners shedding 2.8% and 2.7% respectively following profit taking in GUARANTY (-3.1%), STANBIC (-4.2%), NEM(-10.0%) and AIICO (-5.7%).
The Oil & Gas index trailed, down 1.0% on the back of losses in MOBIL (-4.6%) while the Consumer Goods index fell by 0.4% following sell offs in NESTLE (-2.5%), GUINNESS (-2.9%) and DANGSUGAR (-1.4%). Finally, DANGCEM (-0.3%) and CUTIX (-2.7%) dragged the Industrial Goods index 0.1% lower.
Investor sentiment as measured by the market breadth (advance/decline ratio) weakened to 0.4x from 0.5x recorded the previous trading session as 11 stocks appreciated against 30 decliners.
The top performing stocks were NEIMETH (+10.0%), OKOMUOIL (+10.0) and AGLEVENT (+8.3%) while NEM (-10.0%), CHAMS (-10.0%) and UCAP (-9.4%) led the laggards.
“Following today’s negative performance, we expect the bearish sentiment to persist in the absence of market events. However, we do not rule out the possibility of bargain hunting in bellwethers that have declined to drive market performance in subsequent trading sessions”, Afrinvest said.
