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Chinwendu Obienyi
Hope of a positive start in 2019 stock trading was dashed Wednesday on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) as the equities began the first trading week on a negative note.
The All-Share Index (ASI), which opened the year at 31,430.50 points, fell by 1.15 per cent or 360.44 basis points while market capitalisation decreased by N134 billion to close at N11.586 trillion from N11.720 trillion posted on Monday. As a result, Year-to-date (Ytd) performance stood at -1.1 per cent.
In tandem with the broader market, performance was mostly negative across sectors. The Banking index was the lone gainer, up 0.1 per cent following buying interest in ETI (+2.1 per cent). Among the losing indices, the Consumer Goods index fell the most by 2.3 per cent as investors sold off Nigerian Breweries (-8.42 per cent) and Nestle (-0.7 per cent). Other sectors – Insurance, Industrial Goods and Oil & Gas – lost 1.3, 1.2 and 0.7 per cent respectively, was dragged by losses in NEM (-5.2 per cent), WAPCO (-3.6 per cent) and Oando (-4.0 per cent).
Similarly, activity level on the nation’s bourse shrank as volume and value of stocks traded considerably fell by 76.9 and 60.5 per cent to 214.4 million units and N1.56 billion respectively, exchanged in 2,856 deals.
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Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) weakened to 0.9x from 1.8x recorded on the previous trading day (Monday) as 21 stocks declined while 18 others advanced.
The best performing stocks for the day were Julius Berger (+10.0 per cent), Vitafoam (+9.5 per cent) and Royal Exchange (+9.1 per cent) while Nigerian Breweries (-8.4 per cent), Law Union (-8.3 per cent) and Honeywell Flour Mill (-7.8 per cent) performed the worst.
Diamond Bank was the toast of investors as it traded 50.65 million shares valued at N111.99 million. Sovereign Insurance was next with the sale of 32.95 million shares worth N6.65 million while Access Bank transacted 20.77 million shares valued at N136.21 million.
Analysts at Afrinvest said, “as bargain hunting opportunities avail, we expect investors to take positions in market bellwethers and stocks with strong fundamentals and as such expect a considerable improvement on market performance for the rest of the week.”
