The Nigerian Equities Market halts a five-day positive run as the domestic market began the week in negative territory, leaving the All Share Index 0.23 per cent to 41,082.38 basis points.
Similarly, the market capitalisation stands at N21.491trillion, as against an opening mark of N21.53 trillion. Thus investors lost N39.54 from their portfolio.
Notably, on Monday, investors sold part of their holdings in large-cap stocks such as Dangote Cement, Flour mills of Nigeria, United Bank for Africa, and Zenith Bank to book profit amid their recent price increase. Hence, their respective share prices fell to 1.01 per cent, 5.49 per cent, 1.62 per cent, and 0.57 per cent respectively.
Overall performance was however impressive as the Exchange recorded more gainers than losers with 36 against 22. Hence, the year-to-date gain of the NSE ASI lowered to two per cent.
On the chart, AIICO Insurance, Cadbury, Universal Insurance, Afri Insurance, Transnational Express and RTBriscoe, each gained 10 per cent to lead the gainers, while from the rear of the chart, Japaul Gold, Flourmills, Wema Bank, Neimeith Pharmaceutical and GlaxoSmithKline led the chart.
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Performance across sub-sector was bullish as three out of the five indices tracked closed in green; the NSE Banking, NSE Insurance and NSE Oil/Gas indices rose by 0.01nper cent, 5.98 per cent, 0.02 per cent respectively.
On the flip side, the NSE Consumer Goods and NSE Oil/Gas indices declined by 0.62 per cent and 0.43 per cent respectively.
Equities market turnover as measured by the volume of trades gained steam to record 739 million, a 10.79 per cent gain from the previous trading session. Value of trades on the other hand fails to measure up to the momentum garnered by volume of trades as it goes down by 34.76 per cent to stand at N4.173 billion.
Living Trust, Japaul Gold, Universal Insurance, Transnational Corporation and FBN Holdings were the most active to boost market turnover.
Despite the day’s negative trade, Analysts at APT Securities remained optimistic. “We expect a more bullish run amidst short term profit-taking as the trading week unfold, with mid to low capitalisation stocks leading the charge,” they said.
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