By Adedapo Adesanya
Depreciation in the stock prices of Aradel Holdings Plc and FrieslandCampina Wamco Nigeria Plc saw the bears depress the NASD Over-the-Counter (OTC) Securities Exchange by 0.67 per cent on Wednesday, August 23.
Aradel recorded a N25.50 loss to sell at N434.79 per share compared to N460.00 per share of the previous session, while FrieslandCampina made a N1.00 loss to close the day at N73.00 per unit versus N74.00 per unit.
The duo weakened the market capitalisation of the NASD OTC bourse by N7.40 billion to close at N1.105 trillion from N1.112 trillion that was quoted at the previous session.
In the same vein, the NASD Unlisted Securities Index (NSI) declined yesterday by 5.28 points to end the day at 788.70 points as against the 793.98 points it recorded at the previous session.
During the trading day, there was a 98.04 per cent drop in the volume of securities traded by investors to 200,192 units from the 10.2 million units exchanged a day earlier.
Also, the value of transactions by the market participants went down by 94.3 per cent to N9.99 million from the N173.9 million quoted in the preceding trading session.
However, the number of deals carried out during the session increased by 3.3 per cent to 31 deals from the 30 deals executed in the previous trading day.
The most traded stock by volume on a year-to-date basis on Wednesday was Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) Plc for trading 1.1 billion units worth N21.5 billion, Industrial and General Insurance (IGI) Plc was in second place with 636.2 million units valued at N51.0 million, and Geo-Fluids Plc stood in third place with 631.0 units worth N1.1 billion.
Also, CSCS Plc was the most traded stock by value on a year-to-date basis for transacting 1.1 billion units worth N21.5 billion, VFD Group occupied the second spot with 26.4 million units valued at N5.9 billion, and Aradel was in third place with 4.7 million units worth N1.5 billion.
Modupe Gbadeyanka