Chinwendu Obienyi
Following price losses in Total, FCMB and Africa Prudential, Nigeria’s stock market closed in the red as the All-Share Index (ASI) declined marginally by 0.05 per cent to 21,729.48 points.
Consequently, YTD return worsened to -19.0 per cent while market capitalisation declined N6 billion to close at N11.3 trillion.
Also, activity level on the bourse waned as volume and value traded fell by 29.4 and 37.3 per cent to 233.1 million units and N2.2 billion respectively, exchanged in 3,874 deals.
The most active stocks by volume were GT Bank (49.7 million units), Zenith Bank (44.7 million units) and Access Bank (44.2 million units) while GT Bank (N847.8 million), Zenith Bank (N522.2 million) and Access Bank (N250.3 million) led by value.
Sector performance was bullish as 4 of 6 indices trended northward. The Banking index led the gainers, up 2.9 per cent due to buying interest in UBA (+9.1 per cent). Similarly, the Insurance and Industrial Goods indices inched higher by 1.4 and 0.4 per cent respectively following gains in PRESTIGE (+9.1 per cent) and CUTIX (+10.0 per cent). Price appreciation in PZ (+8.6 per cent) and Cadbury (+9.7 per cent) drove the Consumer Goods index 0.2 per cent higher.
On the flip side, the AFR-ICT and Oil & Gas indices declined to 1.6 and 1.0 per cent respectively due to sell-offs in MTNN (-3.0 per cent) and Total (-10.0 per cent).
However, 19 stocks advanced relative to 7 others which recorded losses. The best performers were CUTIX (+10.0 per cent) Cadbury (+9.7 per cent) and Prestige (+9.1 per cent) while Total (-10.0 per cent), Africa Prudential (-9.9 per cent) and Jaiz Bank (-8.2 per cent) led the laggards.