Chinwendu Obienyi
Ahead of the presidential election this weekend, the trading on the Nigerian Stock Exchnage witnessed renewed bearish sentiment yesterday, reversing its positive performance with a decline of 0.14 per cent to close Thursday’s session at 32,568.66 points following profit taking in the shares of International Breweries, Zenith Bank and Dangote Flour.
As a result, market capitalisation fell N17 billion to settle at N12.145 trillion, while Year-to-Date (YtD) gain moderated to 3.6 per cent.
Activity level also weakened in line with market direction as volume and value of stocks traded declined 50.6 and 60.3 per cent to 220.60 million units and N2.24 billion respectively, exchanged in 4,327 deals.
Reacting to the bearish trend, analysts at Afrinvest said, “In line with our expectation, investors took profit in today’s trading session, we expect to see further profit taking in tomorrow’s trading session – the eve of the rescheduled presidential election – as investors trade cautiously”.
Market breadth was however positive as 21 stocks appreciated in value while 15 others depreciated. Ikeja Hotel topped the gainers’ chart with 9.94 per cent to close at N1.99, ABC Transport was next with a gain of 8.33 per cent to close at 0.52 kobo, UAC-prop inched 8.33 per cent to close at N1.82, First Aluminium increased by 6.90 per cent to close at 0.31 kobo while MCNICHOLS garnered 6.82 per cent to close at 0.47 kobo. On the flipside, Linkage Assurance led the laggards with 10 per cent to close at 0.63 kobo per share. International Breweries followed with a decline of 9.48 per cent to close at N26.25, Neimeth fell by 8.57 per cent to close at 0.64 kobo,Mutual Benefit shed 7.41 per cent to close at 0.25 kobo while Lasaco lost 6.06 per cent to close at 0.31.