Chinwendu Obienyi
Dragged by sell-offs in GT Bank, Nestle and Zenith Bank, investor’ sentiment on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE)continued to weaken up untill Thursday, as the All Share Index (ASI) declined 1.63 per cent to close the session at 31,721.76 points.
Consequently, NSE market capitalisation lost N195 billion from N12.024 trillion recorded on Wednesday to settle at N11.828 trillion, while Year-to-Date (YtD) gain dipped to 0.9 per cent.
Not withstanding however, activity level was mixed as volume traded decreased slightly by 9.7 per cent to 411.69 million units, while total value traded surged 96.6 per cent to N5.26 billion.
Market analysts believed that current bearish sentiment in the market emanated from sell-offs triggered by foreign portfolio investors. They however noted that these pressures present buying opportunities in fundamentally sound stocks and expect a bearish close today as investor sentiment remains weak.
Performance across sectors was largely bearish as all indices outside the Industrial Goods index closed in the red. The Industrial Goods index inched higher, up 0.9 per cent due to bargain hunting in Dangote Cement (+1.45 per cent) following its impressive Full year 2018 results. The Banking index led laggards, down 4.6 per cent based on sell-offs in GT Bank (-6.85 per cent).
In the same vein, the Consumer Goods index dipped 2.0 per cent as Nestle (-2.0 per cent), posted another consecutive day of losses. Similarly, the Oil & Gas and Insurance indices declined 1.6 and 1.0 per cent respectively due to price depreciation in Oando Plc (-9.92 per cent) and REGALINS (-7.41 per cent).
Investor’ sentiment as measured by the market breadth (advance/decline ratio) stood at 0.3x as 9 stocks advanced against 30 decliners. Livestock Feeds (+7.94 per cent), Union Diagnostics(+7.14 per cent) and UAC-Prop (+4.95 per cent) were the top performers while Oando Plc (-9.92 per cent), FCMB(-9.78 per cent) and Dangote Flour (-8.78 per cent) were the worst performers.