Local Equities Market Loses N27.50bn,Amid Sustained Bearish Activity

The bears continue to dominate the stock market, as the benchmark index dipped by 0.21 per cent  to 26,809.92 points, following investors’ sell-offs in MTNN, Dangote Sugar and UBA.

 Thus, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns worsened to -2.97 per cent  and -14.70 per cent , respectively.

The total volume of trades increased by 22.56 per cent  to 185.94 million units, valued at N2.54 billion and exchanged in 3,083 deals. ZenithBank was the most traded stock by volume and value at 60.92 million units and N1.10 billion respectively.

All sectoral indices closed in the green, with the exception of the Consumer Goods (-0.09 per cent ) index, as the Oil and Gas (+1.04 per cent ), Industrial Goods (+0.08 per cent ), Insurance (+0.06 per cent ) and the Banking (+0.05 per cent ) indices all recorded gains.

Market sentiment, as measured by market breadth, was negative (0.86x) as 12 tickers recorded gains relative to 14 losers. NASCON (+10.00 per cent ) and NPF Microfinanace bank (+9.09 per cent ) topped the gainers’ list while Champion (-9.57 per cent ) and Courtville (-9.09 per cent ) printed the largest declines.

In a similar vein the naira traded flat against the US dollar at N360.00/USD in the parallel market while it depreciated by 0.02 per cent  to N362.45/USD at the I&E FX window.