Last week, equities investors t the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) lost N868.03 billion as the market capitalisation of the local bourse dipped by 3.10 per cent over the five-days trade to settle at N27.16 trillion.
The Nigerian equities market closed bearish through the week aside from Friday, leaving the All-Share Index (ASI) depreciated by 3.10 per cent, following the 0.45 per cent decline recorded in the previous week.
According to the data from the local bourse, the benchmark index, ASI, depreciated by 3.10 per cent from 51,979.92 basis points recorded as of the end of the previous week to close last week at 50,370.25 index points.
The Nigerian Tribune reports that this brings the month-to-date performance of the local stock market to 2.79 per cent and a year-to-date gain of 17.92 per cent.
Notably, the week’s bearish trade was due to sell pressure on United Capital, MTN Nigeria, Japaul Gold, AIICO Insurance and Transcorp as these stocks’ values depreciated by 20 per cent, 17 per cent, 22 per cent, 16 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively.
Also, sectoral performance showed that most traded in the south, week on week (w/w), as the NGX Insurance Index and NGX Consumer Goods indexes closed the week in the negative at 4.96 per cent and 3.44 per cent w/w. Trailing were the NGX Oil/Gas Index, NGX Banking Index and NGX Industrial Index which recorded losses of 0.95 per cent, 0.43 per cent and 0.22 per cent respectively on a w/w comparison.
Elsewhere, the level of trading activity during the week was upbeat as the total traded volume and value increased by 68.51 per cent and 10.03 per cent w/w to 1.55 billion units valued at N16.29 billion.
Meanwhile, deals for the week under review close at 23,867 from 19,513 in the prior week.
Similar to the previous week, the Financial Services Industry led the activity chart in terms of volume of shares traded with 1.192 million shares valued at N5.978 billion traded in 11,996 deals; thereby contributing 77.11 per cent and 36.70 per cent to the total equity turnover volume and value respectively.
Conglomerates Industry followed with 102.969 million shares worth N236.618 million in 858 deals while the Consumer Goods Industry stood in third place with a turnover of 102.937 million shares worth N2.616 billion in 3,167 deals.
Trading in the top three equities by volume namely International Energy Insurance Plc, Transcorp Hotels Plc and Zenith Bank Plc accounted for 798.900 million shares worth N2.602 billion in 3,110 deals, contributing 51.69 per cent and 15.98 per cent to the total equity turnover volume and value respectively.
Looking ahead, analysts expect the market to trade in a mixed sentiment as the unimpressive macro story remained a headwind to market performance for the moment amid the continued earnings releases.
Analyst at Cowry Asset Management Limited, therefore, advised investors to trade on companies’ stocks with sound fundamentals and a positive outlook.
