By Dipo Olowookere
The total value of shares on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) as captured by the market capitalisation depreciated on Monday by N55 billion.
The loss, about 0.44 per cent, was influenced by profit-taking activities of investors, who quickly rebalanced their portfolios after the gains recorded in the past sessions.
This led to the reduction of the market capitalisation yesterday to N12.625 trillion from N12.680 trillion it closed last Friday when the bourse appreciated by 0.12 per cent.
Business Post reports that the losses came from 17 stocks led by Mobil Oil as the share price of this energy stock depreciated by N19.20 to N173.40 per unit.
MTN Nigeria lost N1.10 during the session to settle at N115 per share, Zenith Bank went down by 50 kobo to quote at N16.20 per unit, GTBank declined by 45 kobo to finish at N22 per share, while Eterna depreciated by 15 kobo to N2.09 per unit.
There were 14 price risers at the market on Monday and NASCON led the chart after adding 50 kobo to its share value to quote at N10 per unit.
BUA Cement, C&I Leasing and Africa Prudential gained 25 kobo each to sell at N41.20 per share, N4.20 per share and N4.25 per share respectively, while Caverton rose by 14 kobo to trade at N1.95 per share.
It was observed that more trading activities occurred in the first session of the week when compared with the previous session.
The volume of shares transacted by investors increased by 75.67 per cent to 231.2 million units from 131.6 million units, while the value of stocks traded rose by 139.55 per cent to N2.2 billion from N899.5 million, with the number of deals jumping by 29.76 per cent to 3,950 deals from 3,044 deals.
Equities of Sterling Bank caught the attention of market participants, who bought and sold 77.6 million units valued at N96.8 million.
FCMB traded 33.3 million shares for N63.2 million, Fidelity Bank exchanged 27.1 million stocks worth N48.2 million, GTBank transacted 9.8 million shares for N215.0 million, while MTN Nigeria traded 9.7 million equities valued at N1.1 billion.
When market activities were wrapped up on Monday, the All-Share Index (ASI) depreciated by 105.76 points to 24,200.60 points 24,306.36 points.
In addition, the oil/gas, banking and insurance indices went down by 1.75 per cent, 1.70 per cent and 0.35 per cent respectively, while the industrial goods sector gained 0.26 per cent, with the consumer goods counter closing flat.
