By Dipo Olowookere
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) recorded its first loss in straight eight sessions on Monday, going down marginally by 0.01 percent.
This was majorly caused by activities of profit takers, which brought both the All-Share Index (ASI) down by 1.18 points to 22,920.41 points from 22,921.59 points, and the market capitalisation by N1 billion to N11.945 trillion from N11.946 trillion.
Business Post observed that the downtrend recorded on the first trading day of the week was influenced by selloffs in the banking space. The index fell by 4.01 percent, while the oil/gas counter depreciated by 0.45 percent.
Gains printed by the industrial goods index, consumer goods index and insurance counter could not sustain the positive momentum yesterday. The sectors ended the session higher by 4.80 percent, 1.19 percent and 1.11 percent respectively.
Guinness Nigeria suffered the heaviest loss on Monday, depreciating by N2.10 to close at N20.30 per unit, while GTBank lost 90 kobo to sell at N19.90 per share.
Zenith Bank decreased by 85 kobo to N14.15 per unit, PZ Cussons lost 40 kobo to trade at N4 per share, while Access Bank depreciated by 30 kobo to quote at N6.40 per share.
Conversely, Nestle Nigeria ended the day as the biggest price gainer, adding N8 to its share price to settle at N975 per share.
MTN Nigeria gained N3.50 to sell at N100 per unit, BUA Cement appreciated by N2.70 to quote at N34.55 per unit, Julius Berger gained N2.45 to trade at N26.95 per share, while Nigerian Breweries grew by N2.15 to sell at N34.50 per share.
Despite the marginal decline recorded yesterday, the activity level improved as a total of 345.4 million stocks worth N4.2 billion were transacted in 4,930 deals compared with 231.6 million shares valued at N2.6 billion exchanged hands in 4,521 deals last Friday.
From the above, the volume of transactions yesterday increased by 49.15 percent, the value of trades rose by 61.20 percent, while the number of deals grew by 9.05 percent.
FBN Holdings was the most active equity, trading 115.3 million units worth N538.2 million. GTBank exchanged 51.8 million shares valued at N1.1 billion, Transcorp transacted 33.4 million stocks for N23.1 million, Zenith Bank traded 26.0 million equities worth N376.5 million, while UBA sold 20.3 million units valued at N122.7 million.
