Equity market further recedes, sheds 0.04%

 

The equity market on Monday opened the week in a bearish position, shedding 0.04 percent to peg the year to date at 8.40 percent.
Today’s bearish performance was largely due to profit taking in Guaranty Trust Bank (-3.4 percent), Unilever Nigeria (-5.0 percent) and Seplat Petroleum Development Company (-3.0 percent). Consequently, market capitalisation declined to N15.0 trillion as investors lost N5.9 billion in value. In the same vein, activity level weakened as volume and value traded fell 32.2 percent and 24.1 percent to 379.9m units and N5.1 billion respectively. Access Bank (77.9 million), Zenith Bank (58.4 million) and UBA (44.0 million) were the top traded stocks by volume while Zenith Bank (N1.8 billion), Access Bank (N885.1 million) and Nestle Nigeria (N548.3 million) were the top traded stocks by value.
Performance across sectors was largely bearish as 3 of 5 indices trended southwards, while 2 closed in the green. The Oil & Gas index led laggards, down 2.5 percent following price depreciation in SEPLAT (-3.0 percent). The Industrial Goods index trailed, shedding 2.0 percent due to sell offs in Lafarge Africa (-4.0 percent) followed by the Banking index which fell 0.4 percent on the back of losses in Guaranty Trust Bank (-3.4 percent) and Diamond Bank (-4.7 percent). On the flipside, the Insurance and Consumer Goods indices gained 1.3 percent) and 0.3 percent respectively driven by buying interest in NEM Insurance (+2.2 percent), Nigerian Breweries (+1.9 percent), Nestle Nigeria (+0.2 percent) and Dangote Sugar (+0.7 percent).
Investor sentiment measured by market breath (advance/decline) ratio improved to 2.0x from 0.7x recorded the preceding Friday as 34 stocks advanced relative to 17 stocks that declined. The top performing stocks were GlaxoSmithKline (+10.0 percent), Custodian Alliance Insurance (+10.0 percent) and Multiverse (+9.5 percent) while Forte Oil (-9.1 percent), Royal Exchange (-6.1 percent) and Unilever Nigeria (-5.0 percent) were the worst performing stocks.