Nigeria’s equities market trading closed negative on Wednesday as bears sustained their hold on the local bourse for the third consecutive session, thereby diminishing the broad market’s performance
Consequently, the market’s All-share Index (ASI) depreciated by 0.41% to close at 55,490.2 points while the market capitalization declined by N127 billion to close at N30.228 trillion at the end of the day’s trading session.
Available statistics from the supervisory institution of the bourse, the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) on the day’s trading trend indicated that the decrease in the market’s ASI reduced the market’s Year-to-Date (YtD) returns by 7.54%, slowing the market gain so far to 3,894.54 basis points since the commencement of trading in the bourse this year.
The trading data reflected that the market breadth closed slimmer as PRESTIGE led the 11 gainers’ table while the UCAP topped the 19 losers table at the end of the Monday’s trading session.
The NGX further reported that the volume of stocks traded during the day under review totaled 181.1 million value at N3.40 billion in 3,908 deals.
Also, the trading indices reflected that the five top ASI gainers were PRESTIGE up + 7.89% to close at N0.41; VERITASCAP up + 5.00% to close at N0.21; NGXGROUP up + 4.87% to close at N28.00; UNILEVER up + 3.70% to close at N14.00; and JAPAULGOLD up + 3.57% to close at N0.29
However, the data showed that top five ASI losers comprised UCAP down – 9.30% to close at N11.70; UPL down – 7.50% to close at N1.85; GLAXOSMITH down – 7.46% to close at N6.20; NEIMETH down – 7.01% to close at N1.46; and OANDO down – 6.74% to close at N4.01
The NGX indicated in the data that when the trading ended, the top three traded stocks by volume were GTCO –33,850,599; TRANSCORP –20,126,541; and ZENITHBANK –18,560,024 while those that topped the value table comprised GTCO – N841,945,235; FLOURMILL – N573,142,314; and ZENITHBANK – N454,670,529.
