Despite the positive market breadth of 20 gainers against 7 losers, the equities market of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) closed red with a marginal decline of 0.05 per cent on Wednesday.
This is amid the remote trading of brokers on the floor of the local bourse, being the measure taken by the NSE management to contain the spread of COVID-19.
The reversal of previous day gains followed profit-taking on MTN Nigeria, Total and five other stocks as gains in Banking, Consumer and Industrial goods sectors failed to sustain yesterday’s gain.
Consequently, the year to date loss of the NSE All-Share Index (ASI) increased to 19.05 per cent as predicted by analysts that the bullish activity would be short-lived amid increases in COVID-19 cases and sustained low crude oil prices.
In summary, the All-Share Index (ASI) decreased by 11.68 absolute points, representing a dip of 0.05 per cent to close at 21,729.48 points. Similarly, the overall Market Capitalisation size shed N6.09 billion, representing a dip of 0.05 per cent to close at N11.32 trillion.
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The downturn was impacted by loses recorded in large and medium capitalised stocks, amongst which are; Total (-10.00%), Africam Prudential (-9.87%), FCMB (-3.85%) and MTN Nigeria (-2.91%).
Market activity was weak as volume and value of stocks traded tanked by 29.27 per cent and 37.25 per cent to 0.23 billion units and N2.24 billion respectively.
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