Stock market opens new week slightly bearish, down 0.05%

By Chukwuma Umeorah  

Trading activities on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NGX) on Monday closed bearish after recording a marginal decline of 0.05 per cent, shrinking investors’ wealth by only N1.7 billion.  This is coming even after an underwhelming market performance in the previous week which saw share trading decline by 16.6 per cent during the week. 

Consequently, the benchmark NGX All-Share index, yesterday dropped 29.35 basis points or 0.05 per cent and closed at 54,886.04 basis points from 54,915.39 basis points that was recorded at the close of the previous trading day. 

Market capitalisation stood at N29.899 trillion after it shed only N1.7 billion at the close of yesterday’s trading activities.   

The data represents a week-on-week (wow) loss of 1.61 per cent, a monthly gain of 1.22 per cent, and an overall year-to-date (ytd) gain of 7.1 per cent. 

At the end of the first weekday of trading on the local bourse, a total of 1.171 billion units of shares corresponding to a market value of N2.877 billion were traded in 3,066 deals. When compared with the previous NGX trading day, the data reveals a 646 per cent improvement in volume, about 84 per cent improvement in turnover and 4 per cent improvement in deals. 

Neimeth International Pharmaceuticals Plc (NEIMETH) led the activities chart (measured by volume) trading 1.068 billion units of shares valued at N1.581 billion while United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) exchanged 15.964 million units of shares valued at N128.784 million. ACCESS HOLDINGS PLC (ACCESSCORP) traded 13.033 million units of shares with a corresponding market value of N114.365 million.  Market breadth was however positive as 19 stocks gained in value while 14 stocks depreciated. 

ACCESSCORP emerged the best performing stock yesterday gaining 7.14 per cent in value closing at N9.00 per share, CUTIX gained 5.69 per cent to close at N2.23 per share while UPL also gained by 5.53 per cent and closed the day at N2.10 per share. Other stocks that grew in value were CUSTODIAN, gaining 5.17 per cent closing at N6.10 per share and CHAMS went up in value by 4.17 per cent closing at N0.25 per share. 

On the losing side, the value of stocks in WAPIC declined by 9.52 per cent closing at N0.38 per share, followed by IKEJAHOTEL which lost 9.52 per cent closing at N1.14 per share while STANBIC shed 8.52 per cent to close the day at N36.50 per share. 

Other stocks that lost were MULTIVERSE which went down by 5.80 per cent and closed at N3.25 per share, LIVESTOCK trailed, losing 5.50 per cent closing the day at N1.03 per share.