Bears held sway as the Nigerian Equities Market overturned the previous day’s positive outing to end the fourth trading session of the week in the red region amidst low turnover. The benchmark NGXASI lost by 49bps to close at 71,457.92 points from 71,808.64 points in the previous session.

The day’s negative performance was primarily driven by investors’ profit taking activities in bellwether stocks such as UBA (-0.45%), ACCESSCORP (-5.21%), GTCO (-1.76%), FBNH (-9.86%), ZENITHBANK (-2.35%), NIDF (-0.09%) and 23 other stocks which kept the All-Share-Index in the red region.

Consequently, the year-to-date returns pegged to 39.43%, while the overall market capitalization decreased by 49 basis points as investors fortunes declined by N191.92 billion.

Market activity for the day was negative as value and volume traded decreased by 37.62% and 36.73% to reach N7.55 trillion and 436.56 million units, respectively.