The Nigerian equity market is currently at the mercy of the bears since the market resumed weekly trading on Monday when the bulls surrendered to profit-taking pressure.
In the last three trading session, from Monday through Tuesday to Wednesday, investors in the market have parted with N203 billion, being the amount scraped off the aggregate worth of shares at the local bourse.
This pushed the equity market capitalisation southwards from N28.626 trillion with which the week opened to N28.423 trillion at the end of Wednesday session.
Similarly, the All-Share Index (ASI), benchmark tracker of share prices at the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) also lost 377.12 points or 0.71% in the three-day period to close at 52.721.34 basis points as against 53,098.46 points it opened on Monday.
The development was occasioned by profit-taking pressure as investors maintained long queues at various counters to seize the opportunity of the previous five consecutive weeks of positive performance. For instance, the market gained N1.166 trillion last week alone.
As the trading floor opened on Monday, investors lost N83 billion while the downtrend accelerated to N101 billion loss on Tuesday and a fresh N19 billion loss on Wednesday at the close of the midweek session.
The negative close on Wednesday was driven by selloffs in FBNH (-3.2%) and WAPCO (-2.4%). Thus, the All-Share closed the midweek lower by 0.1% to 52,721.34 basis points. Accordingly, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns moderated to +6.2% and +23.4%, respectively.
The total volume of trades for the session also declined by 53.8% to 611.97 million units, valued at N7.43 billion, and exchanged in 5,948 deals. FBNH was the most traded stock by volume and value at 153.34 million units and NGN1.90 billion, respectively.
Analyzing by sectors, the Insurance (+0.8%), Consumer Goods (+0.3%), Oil & Gas (+0.2%), and Banking (+0.1%) indices gained, while the Industrial Goods (-0.2) index declined.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative with emergence of 22 decliners relative to 19 gainers.
ACADEMY (-9.9%) and BERGER (-8.9%) recorded the most significant losses of the day, while TRANSCOHOT (+9.8%) and CHAMPION (+7.0%) topped the gainers’ list.
