Nigerian stocks trade low as benchmark index dips 0.11% on profit taking

The Nigerian equities market Monday closed on a negative note, as the benchmark index, the NSEASI, depreciated by 0.11 percent to close at 41,172.82 basis points as against 0.27 percent appreciation recorded previously.

Consequently year-to-date (YTD) returns closed higher at 7.66 percent.

The day’s performance was dictated by profit taking in bellwether stocks, which prevented the market from sustaining the gains recorded the previous week. This is despite gains in DANGCEM (+1.0%) and GUINNESS (+0.5%).

To this end, market capitalization pared N16.6 billion in value to settle at N14.91 trillion.

Activity level weakened as volume and value traded depreciated 21.9 percent and 39.3 percent to 221.4n million and N2.6 billion respectively.

The top traded stocks by volume were LASACO (24.3m), GUARANTY (20.7m) and SOVRENINS (16.6m) while GUARANTY (N937.6m), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (N499.8m) and ZENITH (N292.4m) were the top traded by value.

Sector performance was largely bullish as three of five indices under coverage closed in the green. The industrial goods index led advancers, up 0.4 percent on the back of gains in DANGCEM (+1.0%).

Similarly, the oil & gas and insurance indices closed 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent higher respectively due to bargain hunting in 11PLC (+4.8%), ETERNA (+9.8%), AIICO (+4.4%) and MBENEFIT (+3.9%).

On the flipside, the banking and consumer goods indices shed 0.3 percent and 0.2 percent respectively following losses in GUARANTY (-0.6%), ZENITH (-0.2%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-0.8%) and HONYFLOUR (-1.5%).

Investor sentiment measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) remained flat at 1.2x as 21 stocks gained against 18 stocks that declined. The top performing stocks today were ETERNA (+9.8%), CILEASING (+5.0%) and 11PLC (+4.8%) while UNITY (-5.0%), UAC-PROP (-4.9%) and NPFMCRFBK (-4.7%) were the worst performing stocks.

Given the positive investor sentiment, analysts at Afrinvest expect bargain hunting to continually buoy performance in the near-time as attractive prices exist in the market.