Investors Offload N430 Billion Profit from Stock Market

After two days of bullish closes that led to approximately N2.21 trillion profit on Nigerian stocks on Tuesday and Wednesday, investors in the capital market embarked on profit-taking spree on Thursday

As this exerted pressure on the supply side of the market, the domestic bourse paused its upward trend and slowed down primarily due to profit-taking activities in MTN Nigeria which shed -3.8% in share price as well as some Tier-1 banking stocks.

Consequently, the benchmark All-Share Index (ASI) declined by 789.89 points or 1.3% to 59,195.21 basis points, as valuation of the equities market shed N430 billion to close lower at N32.232 trillion.

Accordingly, the Month-to-Date (MtD) and Year-to-Date (YtD) returns moderated to +6.1% and +15.5%, respectively.

Meanwhile, sectoral performance was broadly negative, as the Banking (-4.2%), Insurance (-0.7%), Consumer Goods (-0.4%) and Industrial Goods (-0.2%) indices recorded losses, while the Oil & Gas (+12.1%) index advanced.

Tepid Turnover

During the session, data obtained from the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) indicated waning investors excitement that followed the twin factor of suspension of CBN governor and floating of the naira for unification of exchange rates across various windows.

Specifically, activity level lost momentum as traded volume and value declined by 9.8% and 27.21% respectively to 1.17 billion units, valued at N15.36 billion, and exchanged in 12,611 deals.

This is lower than 1.3 billion shares worth N21.1 billion that exchanged hands in 11.947 deals the previous session.

UBA was the most traded stock by volume at 192.83 million units, while GTCO was the most traded stock by value at N3.33 billion.

As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative (0.9x), as 39 tickers lost relative to 36 gainers. SUNUASSUR (-10.0%) and CORNERST (-9.7%) topped the losers’ list, while TRANSCOHOT (+10.0%) and MRS (+10.0%) recorded the highest gains of the day.

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