Equities lose N78b in opening trades

Nigerian equities came under intense sell-off as the stock market reopened on Monday amidst rising inflation and shrinking disposable incomes.

As against the modest topsy-turvy nature of the market last week, equities reopened with widespread selling sentiments.

There were only seven gainers against 24 losers with the gains ranging between four and one kobo as against losses that were as high as N7.25. With these, investors lost N78 billion in the ensuing buyer’s market.

Aggregate market value of all quoted equities on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) dropped from its opening value of N9.570 trillion to close at N9.492 trillion. The All Share Index (ASI), the value-based index that tracks prices at the stock market, dropped by 0.81 per cent to close at 27,634.99 points as against its opening index of 27,861.03 points. With this, the negative average year-to-date return worsened to -3.52 per cent.

Nearly all sectoral indices also closed in the negative. The NSE Oil & Gas Index declined by 2.08 per cent. The NSE Consumer Goods Index dropped by 1.6 per cent. The NSE Banking Index depreciated by 0.9 per cent while the NSE Industrial Goods Index slipped by 0.1 per cent. However, the NSE Insurance Index inched up by 0.1 per cent.

Forte Oil led the losers with a loss of N7.25 to close at N137.87. Seplat Petroleum Development Company followed with a loss of N5.88 to close at N380. Nigerian Breweries dropped by N4.65 to close at N144.05. GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Nigeria lost 91 kobo to close at N17.48. Cadbury Nigeria dropped by 78 kobo to close at N14.89 per share.

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Guinness Nigeria declined by 71 kobo to close at N82.29. Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI) dropped by 34 kobo to close at N10.81. Zenith Bank lost 30 kobo to close at N14.70 while E-Tranzact and Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (Nahco) dropped by 25 kobo to close at N4.89 and N3.05 respectively.

Total turnover stood at 255.80 million shares valued at N778.44 million in 2,588 deals. The most active stock was Law Union and Rock Insurance with a turnover of 100 million shares valued at N70 million. Transnational Corporation of Nigeria followed with 49.56 million shares worth N49.62 million while Costain placed third with 32.06 million shares valued at N16.03 million.

On the positive side, Africa Prudential Registrars and Wema Bank led the gainers with a marginal gain of 4.0 kobo each to close at N2.72 and 66 kobo respectively. FCMB Group followed with a gain of 3.0 kobo to close at N1.14. Wapic Insurance added 2.0 kobo to close at 52 kobo while Fidson Healthcare, Skye Bank and Nascon Allied Industries inched up by 1.0 kobo each to close at N1.59, 63 kobo and N8.01 respectively.

“We believe performance will be influenced this week by investors’ anticipation of more third quarter 2016 earnings yet to be submitted. With the tepid level of activity amidst weaker sentiment, we expect investors’ interest in equities to remain lacklustre in subsequent sessions,” Lagos-based securities firm, Afrinvest Securities, statedin post-trading review.

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