The Nigerian equities market bows to renewed bargain-hunting activity on Tuesday as the NGX All-Share Index (ASI) slipped by 0.04 per cent to settle at 65,309.65 basis points.
The market’s weak performance was primarily driven by selloffs in Geregu Power, Lafarge Africa and Dangote Sugar, having dipped by 6.38 per cent, 0.89 per cent and 2.94 per cent, respectively.
Consequently, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date gains moderated to +1.5.per cent and +27.4 per cent, respectively.
Owing to the bearish trade on Tuesday, the market capitalization closed at N35.54 trillion leaving equities investors with N14.72 billion loss in their investment.
Despite the bearish tilt in the benchmark index, market breadth closed positive with advancing issues outnumbering declining ones.
On the performance board, Guinness and GlaxoSmithKline topped 19 others on the leader’s table having appreciated in share value by 10.0 per cent and 9.7 per cent, respectively; while NSL Tech and Northern Nigeria Flour Mills led 16 others on the laggard’s table after their share prices dipped by 10.0 per cent amd 9.9 per cent, respectively.
Sub-sector performance was mixed, with three out of the five indices tracked closing in the red zone. However, the NGX Banking and NGX Oil/Gas indices stood out with gains of 0.81 per cent and 0.12 per cent, respectively.
Conversely, the NGX Insurance, NGX Consumer Goods, and NGX Industrial indexes experienced declines of 1.16 per cent, 0.05 per cent, and 0.01 per cent, respectively.
Analysis of market activities for the day under review showed that trade turnover settled higher relative to the previous session, with the value of transactions up by 14.91 per cent . A total of 317.81 million shares valued at N4.47 billion were exchanged in 6,376 deals. Access Holdings CCESSCORP (+1.16%) led volume and value charts with 49.36 million units in deals worth N861.16 million.
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