Equity Market Investors Lose As Sell-offs Continue
Midweek trading on the Nigerian Exchange saw sell-offs continued, resulting in a N720bn loss to investors.
This is also the third day of consecutive bearish trading on the exchange, which has resulted in a combined loss of N1.54tn.
Wednesday’s bearish sentiments saw the All-Share Index and market capitalisation depreciating by 1.31 per cent to 99,302.37 points and N54.32tn, respectively, with the year-to-date returns also dropping to 32.80 per cent.
Market breadth was negative resulting in only five gainers compared to 52 decliners. The gainers were PZ Cussons which gained 10 per cent to close at N29.15, Juli Plc gained 9.93 per cent to close trading at N3.10 and Axa Mansard’s stock appreciated by 1.53 per cent to close at N5.30 per unit.
The top three decliners of the day comprise FCMB Group, Lafarge Africa and Nigerian Breweries with each accumulating losses of 10 per cent, leading to a decrease in their share prices to N7.20, N31.95 and N30.60.
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Bearish sentiments pervaded various sectors, particularly in Banking, Insurance, and Consumer Goods, which witnessed declines of 6.90 per cent, 3.72 per cent, and 1.20 per cent, respectively. These declines were propelled by sell-sentiments in stocks such as Sterling Financial Holdings, Wema Bank, AccessCorp, United Bank for Africa, NEM Insurance, AIICO, NB, Dangote Sugar and Honeywell Flour mill.
Also, the Industrial Goods index saw a decrease of 0.41 per cent due to negative price movements in Lafarge Africa and CUTIX, while the Oil & Gas index remained flat.
On a positive note, trading activities on the local bourse were in the green zone with improvements seen in total deals and traded volume rising by 15.40 per cent and 41.28 per cent to 10,549 deals and 396.23 million units, respectively.
However, the total traded value mirrored the bearish sentiment, declining by 4.80 per cent to N5.83bn.
At the close of the session, indigenous conglomerate, Transcorp Plc took the lead as the most traded security by volume, with 52.57 million units exchanged in 507 deals, while Zenith Bank topped the charts in traded value at N1bn.
