Trading on Nigeria’s equities market continued its downward trajectory on Wednesday across all activity indicators and sector performances, with the All Share Index (ASI) declining by 0.10%, closing at 97,487.14 points.
Data from the NGX portal showed that the decline in ASI resulted in a loss of NGN 56.1 billion to investors, dipping the total market capitalization to N56.01 trillion.
According to the market’s managers, the market breadth returned 0.42x, with 36 losers compared to 15 gainers, highlighting weak market sentiment, a trend that is further reinforced by a UD ratio of 0.14, indicating that only a small fraction of stocks experienced gains in volume relative to decliners, thereby sustaining the prevailing bearish conditions in the market.
The Weekly moving average currently stood above the 50-day moving average, suggesting the potential for a short-term bullish trend. However, the data on today’s trading session at the local bourse reflected a 20-day moving average which is higher than both, indicating that recent price movements remain below longer-term averages, which could suggest a lack of sustained upward momentum.
A further analysis of the sectoral performance of the bourse showed that the Consumer goods sector index was the only gainer as the index grew by 0.31% driven by portfolio rebalancing in INTBREW, NB and GOLDBREW.
Conversely, the Banking sector declined by 0.67% due to share price decline in FIDELITYBK, UBA, and STERLINGNG, amongst other blue chip stocks. Also, The Industrial sector index, Insurance sector index and Oil and Gas sector index declined at the close of the trading by 0.01%, 0.22% and 0.48% respectively.
In terms of market activity, FIDELITYBK led the volume chart, trading 66.2 million units despite its 0.33% decline, closely followed by FBNH which exchanged 38.0 million units.
On the traded stock value chart, UBA topped with a total value of NGN 1.03 billion, despite its 1.82% decline, followed by FIDELITYBK, trading at NGN 988 million.
