Local Bourse Succumbs to Profit-Taking as Index Moderates by 0.02%

The domestic stock market All-Share Index (ASI) Thursday fell marginally by 0.02% to close at 54,924.08 points amid renewed profit-taking activity.

Consequently, equity market capitalisation of the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) closed the session lower at N29.921 trillion after investors recorded a net loss of N51 billion.

The negative outlook also reflected in market breadth of the session as the Exchange printed a higher number of losers than gainers in a 17 to 14 ratio, arising from investors’ overwhelming appetite for profits-booking after three consecutive days of gains.

Notably, investors booked profit on ACCESSCORP, UCAP, DANGSUGAR, PZ, and GTCO; hence, their respective share prices declined by 2.25%, 1.68%, 0.54%, 0.46%, and 0.20%. Consequently, the year-to-date gain of the local bourse mellowed to 7.17%.

Similarly, the bearish trend was also seen across subsectors tracked BUSINESS METRICS as the NGX Banking, NGX Insurance, and NGX Consumer Goods indexes, moderated by 0.45%, 0.42%, and 0.04%, respectively.

On the flip side, the NGX Oil/Gas and NGX Industrial indices, remained unchanged from the previous trading day.

In broad and narrow markets, the NGX Premium and NGX Mainboard indexes decreased by 4 basis points and 1 basis point, respectively, while the NGX-30 index rose by 2 basis points.

Meanwhile, trading activity improved, with total deals and value increasing by 3.87%, and 5.13%, respectively, to 2,575 trades and N1.40 billion.

In terms of volume, TRANSCORP was the most active stock, with 23.40 million shares worth N31.48 billion changing hands in 78 deals.