Bears Maintain Grip on Equities as NGX shed N21 Billion on Monday

The Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) commenced a new trading week in the red territory as equity investors again parted with some fortune to the tune of N21 billion.

Business Metrics had reported that investors lost N571 billion to close last week following aggressive profit-taking on stocks across various sub-sectors of the market.

With analysts holding that the direction of the new week remains gloomy and dependent on signals from the fixed income market, the bears have already set the tone for the week as mixed sentiment pervaded the atmosphere of the trading floor on Monday.

The most significant loss that led to the day’s loss was recorded in the shares of PRESCO, shedding 10% of its value to offset gains recorded in MTN Nigeria (+0.5%) and ZENITH BANK (+2.1%).

Thus, the All-Share Index (ASI) shed 34.64 points equivalent to 0.07% to closed at 49,57.33 basis points. Similarly, aggregate value of the equity market lost N21 billion to close lower at N26.766 trillion.

Accordingly, the Month-to-Date loss and Year-to-Date gain settled at -1.4% and +16.3%, respectively.
The loss of the day was also complemented by a lull in the turnover for the session with volume and value traded slipping by 71.9% and 58.77% respectively.

Investors traded a total of 210.84 million share units, valued at N2.188 billion, and exchanged in 4,122 deals. This is lower than 750.26 million shares worth N5.307 billion that exchanged hands in 4,077 transactions in the previous session.

As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative as 16 tickers lost relative to 12 gainers that emerged at the end of the session.

Data obtained from the NGX showed that in terms of percentage loss, PRESCO led the chart with approximately 10% loss to close at N142.60 per share; followed by MULTIVERSE which fell by 7.79% to close at N2.25 per share. IKEJA HOTEL, Dango Sugar and Jaiz Bank shed 5.51%, 4.19% and 3.3% to close lower at N120, N16 and N0.88 per share respectively.

On the flip side, NEIMETH led the gainers’ chart with 9.29% gain to close at N1.53 per share, trailed by Unity Bank that closed at N0.45 after gaining by 4.65%.

Other top gainers on the chart are FCMB, Zenith Bank and Transcorp. They gained 4.18%, 2.12% and o.93% to close at N3.49, N21.70 and N1.08 in that order.