Market Downturn: Bears Take Over NGX
So, it looks like the bears took over the market at the Nigerian Exchange Ltd (NGX) on Monday. This put an end to the four days of bullish streak as profit booking activities from mid-large cap stocks caused the All Share Index (ASI) to drop by 0.15% to 71,008.70 basis points. The selloffs in Tier-1 banking names like Zenith Bank, Stanbic IBTC Holdings, and United Bank for Africa drove the overall weak performance by dipping their share prices by 0.75%, 7.08%, and 0.48% respectively. That’s a pretty big drop!
As a result, the Month-to-Date and Year-to-Date returns went down to +2.6% and +38.6% respectively. That’s a bummer for investors as a total of N57.31 billion was wiped out from their pockets, settling the market capitalization at N39.05 trillion. Ouch!
The market sentiment seemed positive though, with 35 tickers gaining relative to 15 losers. The gainers’ list was led by Mecure Industries Plc and Multiverse Mining and Exploration Plc, which appreciated in share value by 10.0% and 9.9% respectively. On the flip side, R T Briscoe Plc and Prestige Insurance recorded the highest losses of the day after their share prices dipped by 9.8% and 9.1% respectively.
When we look at the sectors, the NGX Banking and Consumer Goods sectors posted losses of 0.36% and 0.09% respectively, while the Oil/Gas and Industrial Goods sectors remained flat. The Insurance sector was the only gainer, advancing by 0.50%. Looks like it was a mixed bag!
Trading activities were tepid as the total volume and value took a nosedive by 18.83% and 27.77% to 358.45 million units, valued at N4.36 billion respectively. But, there were more deals made, surging by 11.35% to 6,551 trades.
Access Holdings emerged as the most actively traded security with a total traded volume of 27.58 million units valued at N474.63 million, involving 284 trades. Meanwhile, Zenith Bank was the most actively traded in terms of value, amounting to N502.95 million.
