Downtrend persists as Nigerian stocks shed fresh N92bn

Downtrend persists as Nigerian stocks shed fresh N92bn

The Nigerian stocks market continued on a losing streak as the ASI dipped by 0.44 per cent to close at 39,522.06 at the end of midweek trading session, having shed 175 points.

At the close of market proceedings, investor experienced another round of losses as the aggregate worth of the domestic equities market shed N92 billion to settle at N20.678 trillion, pushing down the year-to-date (YtD) performance to -1.86 per cent.

Specifically, sell pressures in NEM (-9.91 per cent), CHAMPION (-9.97 per cent) and WAPCO (-7.41 per cent) dragged the Insurance, Consumer Goods and Industrial indices respectively into the negative region.

Notably, the Insurance, Consumer Goods and Industrial indices depreciated by 0.86 per cent, 0.45 per cent and 0.41 per cent respectively.

The Oil & Gas index however advanced by 5.02 per cent following buy-interests in SEPLAT whose share price appreciated by 10 per cent, gaining N53 to close at N583 per share to lead the bulls camp.

Investor sentiment as measured by the market breadth closed negative at 0.53x following emergence of 16 advancers and 30 decliners.

In terms do turnover, performance was mixed as the volume of transactions grew by 9.78 per cent in contrast to a 23.42 per cent drop in the value of transactions traded.

ZENITHBANK led both volume and value charts by trading 41.383 million shares valued at N1.060 billion in 635 deals, followed by GUARATY with 28.991 million share units worth N919.823 million in 319 trades.

The third position on the value chart is Nestle, trading 22.087 million shares worth N307.518 million traded in 85 deals while UCAP occupied the third spot on the list of top active stocks of the day as its investors traded 28.606 million shares worth 145.324 million shares.

Collectively, investors closed the midweek session with a total of 244.34 million shares valued at N4.13 billion and traded in 4,714 transactions compared with 222.57 million shares worth N5.39 billion that exchanged hands in 4,470 deals in the previous session.