NSE LIVE! Investors lose N295b as equities slide further

The downtrend that started the week at the Nigerian stock market worsened on Tuesday as continuing sell pressure overwhelmed the market and forced many transactions to close at lower prices. With 35 decliners to 11 advancers, the resultant buyer’s market led to a net capital loss of N295 billion on Tuesday. The market had lost N85 billion on Monday.

All major price-tracking indices at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) showed a stronger tendency towards profit-taking. All sectoral indices closed negative, underlining the widespread selling sentiment that marked pricing on Tuesday.

The All Share Index (ASI)- the common value-based main index that tracks prices at the Exchange, dropped by 2.25 per cent to close at 37,096.60 points as against its opening index of 37,950.96 points. Aggregate market value of all quoted equities also declined simultaneously to N12.786 trillion as against its opening value of N13.081 trillion. The sustained decline shaved the average year-to-date return to38.04 per cent.

Across the sectors, the trails of the bearishness were visible. The NSE Industrial Goods Index recorded above average decline of 4.2 per cent. The NSE Banking Index dropped by 1.2 per cent. The NSE Insurance Index and NSE Consumer Goods Index slipped by 1.0 per cent respectively while the NSE Oil & Gas Index dipped by 0.4 per cent.

Dangote Cement led the decliners with a loss of N10 to close at N225 per share. Nigerian Breweries followed with a loss of N3 to close at N190. Lafarge Africa declined by N2.99 to close at N60.01 per share. Forte Oil dropped by N2.50 to close at N51.50 while Stanbic IBTC Holdings depreciated by N2.05 to close N38.95 per share.

Read also: NSE LIVE! Equities stumble on profit-taking

On the other hand, Seplat Petroleum Development Company led the contrarian stocks with a gain of N2 to close at N481 per share. Conoil followed with a gain of N1.30 to close at N33.89. GlaxoSmithKline Consumer added N1 to close at N21 per share. Berger Paints rose by 34 kobo to close at N7.14 while Unilever Nigeria chalked up by 13 kobo to close at N45.63 per share.

Total turnover stood at 391.63 million shares valued at N5.44 billion in 5,285 deals. Banking stocks remained the most active. Access Bank was the most active stock with a turnover of 179.30 million shares valued at N1.87 million. Zenith Bank followed with 40.15 million shares worth N937.28 million while United Bank for Africa (UBA) ranked third with 24.88 million shares valued at N233.64 million.

Market analysts remained optimistic that the downtrend was only related to profit-taking, reaffirming the positive outlook for the market in the second half.

“Whilst the performance for (Tuesday) yesterday was dragged by profit taking in value stocks that had appreciated in the previous weeks, we do not expect the downtrend to persist beyond the short term as positive developments in the economy continue to bolster investors’ appetite for equities,” Afrinvest Securities-a Lagos-based stated.

 

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