Stock Market Capitalisation Falls by N622bn

At the close of trading on Monday, investors lost N622bn due to sell-offs of some telecoms and banking stocks.

The market which opened with the All-Share Index at 54,892.53 lost 2.08 per cent to close 53, at 750.77. The market capitalisation also depreciated by 2.08 per cent to N29.281tn.

In terms of volume, a total of 100.882 million shares valued at N 4.342bn were traded on the Nigerian Exchange Limited in 3.279 deals.

Measured by market breadth, investors’ sentiment had worsened as five stocks were on the gainers’ table while 21 declined.

The five equities on the gainers’ table include, Courtville which gained 6.67 per cent to close at N0.45, NPF Microfinance gained 2.70 per cent to close at N1.90, AIICO stocks gained 1.75 per cent to close trading at N0.58, First Bank Holdings closed trading at N11.00 following a 0.92 per cent gain and Zenith Bank got on the gainers’ table with a 0.20 per cent gain and closed the market at N25.00.

On the losers’ table were NCR, whose shares lost 9.79 per cent in market value to close at N2.12, the shares of Unity Bank suffered a 9.43 per cent loss to close at N0.48, while Prestige lost 8.89 per cent to close at N0.41.

Top traded in terms of value was MTN Nigeria with 8.264 million shares worth N1.926bn traded in 414 deals.

690,499 shares of Seplat worth N794.055mn were exchanged in 32 deals while 256,505 shares of Airtel Africa valued at N363.814m were traded in 21 exchanges.

Analysts at Afrinvest Securities Limited projected that the bearish trend of the market would be sustained given the weak investor sentiment.