By Dipo Olowookere
Transactions on the floor of the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited closed bearish on Monday as investors continue to play safe and watch happenings from the sidelines.
The selloffs in the banking space continued yesterday, causing its index to marginally reduce by 0.02 per cent at the close of business. The energy sector also went down during the session by 0.35 per cent, affecting the general outcome of the market.
The two sectors outweighed the gains printed by the other three key sectors of the exchange as the insurance counter rose by 0.22 per cent, the industrial goods sector appreciated by 0.07 per cent, while the consumer goods space gained 0.01 per cent.
But the three sectors could not save the All-Share Index (ASI) from depreciating by 73.01 points to finish at 37,585.25 points compared with 37,658.26 points it finished last Friday.
Also, the market capitalisation went down at the close of business by N34 billion to N19.593 trillion from the previous N19.627 trillion.
The market breadth ended negative yesterday as there were 13 price gainers and 18 price losers led by BOC Gases, which depreciated by 9.95 per cent to N9.50.
Royal Exchange went down by 7.94 per cent to 58 kobo, Unity Bank shed 5.17 per cent to close at 55 kobo, Mutual Benefits Assurance dropped 4.76 per cent to sell for 40 kobo, while Honeywell Flour lost 4.52 per cent to trade at N1.48.
Ikeja Hotel was the best-performing stock of the day with a price appreciation of 10.00 per cent, finishing at N1.10, followed by Fidson, which gained 7.91 per cent to trade at N6.00.
Linkage Assurance appreciated by 7.69 per cent to 70 kobo, Chams gained 5.00 per cent to sell for 21 kobo, while FCMB appreciated by 3.33 per cent to quote at N3.10.
Business Post reports that FBN Holdings was the most active stock at the market on Monday with the sale of 18.1 million stocks worth N130.4 million.
UBA traded 13.0 million shares for N94.2 million, GT HoldCo transacted 11.9 million equities valued at N355.4 million, MTN Nigeria exchanged 9.2 million stocks for N150.1 million, while Zenith Bank traded 8.8 million shares worth N208.6 million.
At the close of trading activities, a total of 163.5 million equities worth N3.4 billion exchanged hands in 3,562 deals in contrast to the 202.7 million equities valued at N2.4 billion exchanged in 3,630 deals at the preceding session, indicating a 19.34 per cent decline in the trading volume, a 1.87 per cent decline in the number of deals and a 42.69 per cent growth in the trading value.
Adedapo Adesanya