Nigerian Exchange Sheds N74bn as Investors Dump Stocks
Equities investors portfolio value declined by about N74 billion on Wednesday due to sell pressures on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) trading platform. Market index or the All-Share Index fell by 0.10% to 105,485.99 points, bringing the year-to-date return to 2.49%.
Today’s profit-taking activities across key sectoral indexes dragged the local bourse down by N73.92 billion to close at N66.14 trillion.
Despite the overall downturn, investor sentiment remained positive, with strong market breadth, stockbrokers said. Key indicators fell sharply as data from the Nigerian bourse revealed that 30 tickers gained relative to 17 losers.
Trading activity was robust, with total transaction volume and value surging by 1,548.98% and 2,172.65%, respectively. However, the number of deals declined by 12.39%, with 10,908 transactions recorded, amounting to N352.61 billion in value and 5,760.32 million units traded.
Lafarge Africa (ticker: WAPCO) was the most traded stock by volume and value at 3.53 billion units and N4.47 billion, respectively. Investors booked profit on MTNN (-2.69%) and ZENITHBANK (-1.11%)—thus trimming the market capitalisation by N73.92 billion.
While MBENEFIT (+10.00%) emerged as the best-performing counter, ABCTRANS (-9.21%) led the laggards. Elsewhere, trade metrics strengthened, as total volume and value traded surged to reach 5.76 billion units and N342.61 billion, respectively.
Sovereign Insurance Plc (ticker: SOVERNINS) led the volumes log with 607.06 million units exchanging hands, while SEPLAT amassed N3.5 billion in traded value today. Top gainers include MBENEFIT (+10.00%), ROYALEX (+9.88%), NEM (+9.84%), LASACO (+9.56%), and ETRANZACT (+9.52%).
Conversely, UHOMREIT (-9.93%), ABCTRANS (-9.80%), UNIVINSURE (-8.33%), DAARCOMM (-6.45%), and CHAMPION (-5.00%) led the decliners. Despite the market’s overall bearishness, sectoral performance was largely bullish.
Notably, the Insurance (+2.64%), Consumer Goods (+0.35%), Banking (+0.13%), and Oil & Gas (+0.03%) indexes edged higher, following buying interest in NEM (+9.84%), NESTLE (+2.56%), GTCO (+1.99%), and ETERNA (+3.91%), respectively.
Meanwhile, the Industrial Goods and Commodity indexes were unchanged. #Nigerian Exchange Sheds N74bn as Investors Dump Stocks #FCMB Climbs as Investors Await Audited Results
