By Omobayo Azeez
The struggle for dominance between the bulls and the bears got tougher on Wednesday as mixed sentiments dominated activities at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) leaving investors with a marginal loss of N2 billion.
However, the turnover for the session caught the attention of market observers as traded volume and value went up significantly by 32.37 per cent and 39.35 per cent respectively.
This record was pushed most significantly by trades on the shares of the Nigerian Breweries Plc, Dangote Cement Plc and Guarantee Trust Bank Plc.
Specifically, a total of 402.636 million shares worth N4.554 billion were transacted in 3,252 by investors on the floor of the NSE during the mid-week session, higher than 304.185 million valued at N3.268 billion that exchanged hands in 3,500 deals in the previous session.
The Nigerian breweries recorded the highest market momentum by trading 52.619 million shares worth N1.631 billion in 88 deals to top volume and value charts.
Dangote Cement followed with 10.869 million shares estimated N1.331 billion in 190 trades while GUARANTY trailed with a record of 9.507 million shares worth N204.848 million realized in deals.
Meanwhile, as trading in the Nigerian equities market was mixed, most stocks traded sideways through the day’s session.
Thus, the All-Share index was flat at 24,173.53 points while market capitalization settled at N12.610 trillion. Accordingly, Month-to-Date (MtD) and Year-to-Date (YtD) losses were also flat at -1.3 per cent and -9.9 per cent respectively.
Analysing by sectors, the Consumer Goods (+0.1 per cent) and Oil & Gas (+0.04 per cent) indices recorded marginal gains, while the Insurance (-0.6 per cent) and Banking (-0.03 per cent) indices declined. The industrial Goods index was flat.
It was also tie between the gaining and the losing camp as nine gainers and nine decliners emerged while 20 other securities closed the session on unchanged prices.
Based on the day’s trading statistics pulled from the official website of the exchange, low-cap stocks, led Maybaker top the gainers’ chart. The company recorded N0.22 gain to close at N3. Eternal Oil, Neimeth, Fidson and NPF Microfinance Bank gained N0.16, N.20, N0.10 and No.1 to close at N1.96, N1.50, N3 and N1.42 per share respectively.
On the flip side, the losing camp was led by Glaxosmith with a loss of N0.5 to close at N4.75 per share, followed by AFRPRUD which shed N0.12 to close at N4.01 per share.
Other decliners are Caverton, Sterling Bank and ChIPLC, with N0.06, N0.4 and N0.04 losses to close the day N1.84, N1.18 and N0.45 per share respectively.
