Equities drifts south as investors lose N29bn

Chinwendu Obienyi

Due to profit taking in Tier-1 bank stocks, transactions at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) halted the long run of successive gains as investors lost N29 billion yesterday.

Similarly, the All-Share Index (ASI) fell by 0.22 per cent to close at 25,166.01 points while market capitalisation settled at N13.115 trillion.

Accordingly, the year-to-date (Ytd) loss worsened to -6.2 per cent and this resulted in to a weakened performance in the activity level as the volume and value of stocks traded declined by 40.1 and 38.6 per cent to 348.21 million units and N3.43 billion respectively, in 7,148 deals.

Reacting to the performance of the market, traders said they expected bargain hunting to support market performance in the next trading session.

On the price chart, investor’ sentiment remained mixed as 19 stocks appreciated in value while 18 others depreciated. Cutix led the gainers’ chart with 9.94 per cent to close at N1.88 per share, May and Baker followed with 9.71 per cent to close at N3.39, Champion increased by 9.64 per cent to close at 0.91 kobo, UPL gained 9.62 per cent to close at N1.14 while Neimeth garnered 9.57 per cent to close at N1.03.

ETI on the other hand, led the losers’ chart with 9.92 per cent to close at N5.45 per share. Ikeja Hotel was next with 8.73 per cent to close at N1.15, UBA lost 6.25 per cent to close at N6.75, Oando dropped 5.71 per cent to close at N2.64 while Fidelity Bank declined by 5.50 per cent to close at N1.89.

The most active stocks by volume were FBN Holdings (47.4 million units) Access Bank (36.9 million units), and Zenith Bank(27.4 million units) while GT Bank (N576.2 million), Zenith Bank (N478.1 million) and MTNN (N474.3 million) led by value.