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Chinwendu Obienyi
The equities market opened the week on a bearish note as the All Share Index declined by 0.39 per cent to 27,691.85 points due to sell-offs in Seplat, CCNN and International Breweries.
As a result, investors lost N53 billion as market capitalisation fell to N13.5 trillion and Year-to-Date (YTD) loss worsened to -11.9 per cent.
Activity level declined as volume and value traded dipped 53.4 and 24.6 per cent respectively to 158.3 million units and N2.3 billion.
The most active stocks by volume were Transcorp (31.8 million units), Zenith (18.7 million units) and UBA (17.9 million units) while Nestle (N552.1 million), GT Bank (N372.2 million) and ZENITH (N348.4 million) led by value.
Across sectors, the Oil & Gas index led the losers, shedding 6.8 per cent due to loss in the shares of Forte (-10 per cent). The Industrial and Consumer Goods indices also declined, with losses of 1.0 and 0.4 per cent respectively as investors sold off International Breweries (-8.7 per cent) and CCNN (6.0 per cent) . The Banking index also lost 0.2 per cent on the back of price depreciation in FCMB (-5.3 per cent).
On the other hand, the Insurance index led gainers, advancing 0.7 per cent driven by price appreciation in Sovereign Insurance (+10.0 per cent). The AFR-ICT index also appreciated, inching up 2 basis points as MTNN gained 4 basis points.
Market breadth was negative as 19 stocks gained relative to 21 losers.
The top gainers were ABC Transport (+10.0 per cent), Sovereign Insurance (+10.0 per cent) and JOHN HOLT (+8.7 per cent) while FORTE (-10.0 per cent), SEPLAT (-10.0 per cent) and Julius Berger (-10.0 per cent) were the top losers.
Analysts at Afrinvest said, “We expect the bearish performance to continue as investor sentiment remains weak”.
