By Chinwendu Obienyi
PRICE losses in the shares of Dangote Cement and Nigerian Breweries forced the nation’s securities market to shed 1.9 per cent to leave the index at 30,557.2 points extending its losses to fourth consecutive trading session.
In line with this trend, market capitalisation declined by N219.3 billion to N11.4 trillion, while YTD loss worsened to -2.8 per cent.
However, activity level strengthened as volume and value traded rose 40.9 and 11.8 per cent to 348.8 million units and N3.5 billion respectively.
Performances across sectors was negative as all 5 indices trended south. The Banking and Consumer Goods indices led decliners after shedding 2.5 and 1.7 per cent respectively following profit taking in ETI (-6.7 per cent) and Nigerian Breweries (-5.1 per cent). The Insurance index trailed, down 1.4 per cent on the back of losses in Custodian (-6.1 per cent), while the Industrial Goods and Oil and Gas index fell by 1.0 and 0.4 per cent due to sell offs in DANGCEM (-2.1 per cent) and OANDO (-2.9 per cent).
Meanwhile, Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) weakened to 0.3x from 1.3x recorded in the last trading session as 8 stocks advanced against 32 decliners.
Top performers were Mcnichols (+10.0 per cent), LearnAfrica (+8.7 per cent) and Vitafoam(+6.7 per cent) while Redstarex (-9.1 per cent), FirstAlum (-8.6 per cent) and Nigerins (-8.3 per cent) declined the most.
UBA (123.7m units), Transcorp (33.2m units) and Custodian (32.9m units) were the top trades by volume while UBA (N859.3m), Zenith (N633.3m) and Nigerian Breweries (N590.2m) led the top trades by value.
Analysts at Afrinvest said, “Following today’s losses, we expect some bargain hunting in bellwethers to drive performance in subsequent trading sessions.”