Stocks remain depressed as 1.2% losses in GUARANTY burdens market
Profit-taking continued on Tuesday in the domestic equities market, with Tier I Banking stock — GUARANTY (-1.2 per cent) weighing down the bourse.
Consequently, the NGX ASI ended the session 0.1 per cent lower at 38,256.76 basis points. Accordingly, Month-to-date and Year-to-Date losses increased to -4.0 per cent and -5.0 per cent, respectively.
However, activity level expanded as the total volume of trades increased by 77.3 per cent to 250.20 million units, valued at N1.55 billion and exchanged in 3,534 deals.
Courtville was the most traded stock by volume at 36.85 million units, while Zenithbank was the most traded stock by value at N649.41 million.
On sectors, the insurance and banking indices declined by -1.6 per cent and -0.5 per cent respectively while the consumer goods, oil & gas, and industrial goods indices closed flat.
As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative (0.6x) as 17 tickers lost, relative to 11 gainers. Lasaco (-7.1 per cent) and Champion (-5.7 per cent) topped the losers’ list, while CILeasing (+9.9 per cent) and Royalex (+8.8 per cent) recorded the most significant gains of the day
Currency
The naira depreciated at the i&e window by 0.1 per cent to ngn411.56/usd but stayed flat at N486.00/USD in the parallel market.
Money Market & Fixed Income
The overnight lending rate was flat at 15.3 per cent, in the absence of any significant movement in system liquidity.
The NTB secondary market traded flat, as the average yield was flat at 5.8%. Similarly, the average yield at the OMO segment was flat at 9.6 per cent.
Trading in the Treasury bond secondary market was bearish, as the average yield expanded by 9bps to 12.4 per cent.
Across the benchmark curve, average yield expanded at the short (+25bps) and long (+1bp) ends due to sell-off of the APR-2023 (+149bps) and MAR-2035 (+4bps) bonds respectively, but was flat at the mid-segment.
