Nigeria market cap in 14-month low as bearish sentiments persist

Trading activities at the Nigerian Stock Exchange Thursday closed bearish for the seventh consecutive trade, paring market capitalization by N98.8 billion to settle at N11.7 trillion, the lowest in 14 months.

The bourse benchmark indicator, the All Share Index (ASI) the declined 0.8 percent to 32,022.23 points.

The equities market year-to-date loss consequently worsened to –16.3 percent

Sustained exits in NESTLE (-5.5%), WAPCO (-10.0%), ACCESS (-5.0%) and DANGSUGAR (-2.1%) drove the negative performance of the market.

Similarly, activity level weakened as volume and value traded moderated 29.7 percent and 46.4 percent to 173.4 million units and N3.7 billion respectively.

GUARANTY (28.2m), ZENITH (25.9m) and SKYEBANK (18.9m) were top traded by volume while DANGCEM (N1.0bn), GUARANTY (N0.9bn) and ZENITH (N0.5bn) were top traded stocks by value.

All sub-sectors closed negative save for the banking index which gained a marginal 1bp due to continued bargain hunting in GUARANTY (+1.0%) and UBA (+1.4%).

On the flipside, the industrial goods index led decliners, down 3.3 percent due to sell-offs in WAPCO (-10.0%) and CCNN (-9.9%).

Similarly, the consumer goods index lost 2.3 percent on the back of losses in NESTLE (-5.5) and DANGSUGAR (-2.1%) while the I surance and oil & gas indices shed 1.6 percent and 0.7 percent respectively on sustained declines in WAPIC (-7.5%), LINKASSUR (-7.1), FORTE (-7.4%) and CONOIL (-9.9%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) stood at 0.3x as 9 stocks appreciated compared with 26 stocks that declined.

The best performing stocks were SKYEBANK (+9.8%), UNITY (+9.0%) and TRANSCORP (+4.6%) while WAPCO (-10.0%), CCNN (-9.9%) and CONOIL (-9.9%) lost the most.

Following the continued bearish trend in the market, analysts say they expect a negative performance Friday.