Equities investors lose N954m as bears persist at NGX

On Wednesday, bears persisted at the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) as equities trading exhibited lacklustre performance, with the benchmark index experiencing a marginal decline by 1.74 index points, to settle at 102,106.31 basis points.

Consequently, investors shed N954 million from their portfolio as the market capitalization of listed equities decreased to N55.87 trillion.

Accordingly, the Month-to-Date (MTD) and Year-to-Date (YTD) returns remained at +0.9 per cent and +36.6 per cent, respectively.

As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative as 35 tickers lost relative to 17 gainers.

Notably, stocks such as AIICO Insurance, Cadbury, Guinea Insurance, Tantalizer and Honeywell Flour Mills saw downward repricing, as their share prices fell by 9.92 per cent, 9.50 per cent, 8.93 per cent, 8.70 per cent and 6.96 per cent, respectively.

Across the sectoral front, the sentiment was predominantly negative.

The Banking and Insurance indexes suffered the most setbacks, declining by 1.45 per cent and 1.49 per cent, respectively, driven by sell-offs in Fidelity Bank, United Bank for Africa, Zenith Bank, Wema Bank AIICO Insurance and Mutual Benefits Assurance, among others.

The Industrial index followed suit with a loss of 0.10 per cent, driven by Wapco Insurance and CAP Plc.

In contrast, the Consumer Goods sector recorded a 1.32 per cent gain, thanks to BUA Foods, International Breweries and PZ. However, the Oil/Gas index exhibited a lull performance.

Trading activity levels also showed a negative trend, with notable decreases in the total number of deals, traded volume and value for the day. Total deals decreased by 17.82 per cent, totalling 9,665 trades, while the traded volume and value saw significant drops of 30.81 per cent and 15.68 per cent, reaching 341.92 million units and N6.41 billion.

At the close of the trade, Transnational Corporation was the most traded security in terms of volume with 39.90 million units across 780 trades, while Guaranty Trust Holding Company led in traded value at N1.02 billion.