The bearish performance at the equities market continued into the fourth consecutive trading session, Thursday. The negative performance for the day were specifically spurred by losses in Dangote Cement which fell 0.5 percent, Eco Transnational Incorporated (ETI) which declined 3.3 percent and Access Bank which depreciated by 4.3 percent. As a result, the benchmark index fell by 0.39 percent to 29,553.12 points as year to date loss worsened to -6.0 percent. Market capitalisation also fell by N43.4 billion to N11.1 trillion.
The bearish performance is not expected to persist in tomorrow’s (Friday) trading session says Analysts at Afrinvest. According to them, this is because they anticipate that investors will take advantage of the attractively priced stocks.
In line with the day’s performance, activity level worsened as volume and value traded dipped by 8.1 percent and 48.9 percent to 498.8 million units and N2.9 billion respectively.
The most actively traded stocks for the day by volume were Sterling Bank (124.8m units), Chams (114.7m units) and FBN Holdings (55.4m units) while Zenith Bank (N653.8m), Guaranty Trust Bank (N503.8m) and FBN Holdings (N407.1m) led top traded stocks by value.
Across sectors, performance was largely bearish as 4 of 5 indices closed in the red. The Insurance index declined the most, down 2.5 percent as losses in Regal Insurance (-8.0%) and Axa Mansard Insurance (-7.3%) dragged the index while the Industrial Goods index trailed, inching southward by 0.5% following price depreciation in CAP (-9.9%) and Dangote Cement (-0.5%).
Similarly, the Consumer Goods and Banking indices fell 0.4% apiece due to sell-offs in Dangote Sugar (-3.2%) and Unilever (-2.0%), ETI (-3.3%), Access Bank (-4.3%) and Wema Bank (-4.1%).
On the flip side, the Oil and Gas index extended its gains into another trading session following sustained buying interest in Forte Oil (+9.9%) and Oando (+3.1%).
Meanwhile investors’ sentiments measured by market breadth strengthened in comparison to previous session as 11 stocks advanced relative to 19 stocks that declined.
The top performing stocks were Chams (+10.0%), Forte Oil (+9.8%) and Vitafoam (+7.8%) while the least performing stocks for the day were CAP (-9.9%), Unity Bank (-9.3%) and Eterna (-8.0%).