Equities market sustains bears as investors lose N1.1trn

The domestic bourse extended previous day’s loss as profit-taking activities on MTN Nigeria Communication and tier-1 banking stocks weighed down the bourse.

Consequently, the All Share Index (ASI) of the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) declined by 1.9 percent to close at 101,154.13 basis points, with the Year-to-Date return moderating to 35.3 percent.

Equities investors therefore lost N1.07 trillion as the market capitalisation slipped to N55.36trillion by the end of the day’s trading activities.

As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative, as 56 tickers lost relative to 10 gainers. On the performance board, Royal Exchange and May & Baker recorded the highest losses of the day having dipped in share value by 10.0 percent, respectively, while Tripple G and PZ topped the gainers’ list with 10.0 per cent respective gains in their share prices.

Performance across the sectors was predominantly in the bearish region as five out of the five sub-indices tracked closed negative.

The Banking, Insurance, Consumer Goods, Oil/Gas, and Industrial Goods sectors suffered losses of 8.07 percent, 3.02 percent, 1.82 per cent, 1.81 percent, and 0.39 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, trading activity on the NGX witnessed a positive upturn on Wednesday as the total traded volume and value surged by 15.44 percent and 102.88 percent to 749.13 million units and N22.49 billion, respectively.

However, the total deals for the day declined by 2.00 percent, totaling 14,288 trades.

Transcorp emerged as the most traded security in terms of volume with 79.68 million units worth N1.06 billion across 981 trades, while Geregu led in traded value at N6.98 billion.