Following the rising caseloads of COVID-19 globally especially in Nigeria, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) market capitalisation decreased by N21 billion at the close of trading on Thursday.
This came as its All-Share index (ASI) declined by 0.16 per cent to close at 24,933.41 points due to sell-offs in Nigerian Breweries, Access Bank and Jaiz Bank. As a result, market capitalisation fell by N21 billion to settle at N13.006 trillion while year-to-date (Ytd loss worsened to -7.1 per cent.
Further analysis of the market’s performance showed that activity level waned as the volume and value of stocks traded fell by 35.6 and 18.4 per cent respectively to 171.20 million units and N2.21 billion, exchanged in 3,315 deals.
The most active stocks by volume were FCMB (32.4 million units), GT Bank (29.4 million units) and FBN Holdings (10.4 million units) while GT Bank (N707.9 million), MTNN (N613.0 million) and Nigerian Breweries(N174.9 million) led by value.
Reacting to the development, analysts at Afrinvest, said, “We expect the market to close the week in the negative as investor sentiment remains weak”.
On the price chart, the value of 10 stocks depreciated while 9 others appreciated. Fidson led the laggards with 9.71 per cent to close at N3.07 per share, Neimeth was next with 9.52 per cent to close at N1.71, Nigerian Breweries fell by 9.52 per cent to close at N38, Jaiz Bank dropped 8.96 per cent to close at 0.61 kobo while NPF Microfinance Bank decreased by 7.28 per cent to close at N1.40.
