Dipo Olowookere
By Dipo Olowookere
The first trading session on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) was flat on Monday as investors kept an eye on the unrest in the country.
For nearly two weeks, Nigeria has been boiling as a result of the protest staged by youths, calling for an end to police brutality.
Yesterday, things escalated in Edo State when some hoodlums allegedly invaded two prisons to free inmates, which forced the state government to declare a 24-hour curfew.
In Lagos, activities were halted as protesters blocked major roads and in the Yaba area of the metropolis, some police officers were brutally attacked, while in Abuja, solders mounted roadblocks, though some hoodlums allegedly burnt several vehicles believed to belong to the #EndSARS protesters.
All these events yesterday put investors on the edge and at a time, it was looking that the market will close negative until it finished in stalemate.
At the close of transactions, the All-Share Index (ASI) slightly moved by 0.38 points to 28,659.07 points from 28,659.45 points, while the market capitalisation remained at N14.979 trillion.
Business Post reports that the insurance sector grew on Monday by 1.09 per cent, while the consumer and energy sectors appreciated by 0.88 per cent and 0.54 per cent.
However, the banking and industrial goods indices closed lower by 0.34 per cent and 0.14 per cent respectively.
Zenith Bank suffered the heaviest loss yesterday after going down by 55 kobo to close at N21 per share and was trailed by Eterna, which lost 44 kobo to trade at N4.46 per unit.
Lafarge Africa depreciated by 35 kobo to N18.50 per share, May & Baker declined by 25 kobo to N3 per unit, while Cadbury Nigeria also fell by 25 kobo to N7.80 per share.
On the gainers’ table, Conoil claimed the top spot after adding N1.40 to its share price to finish at N15.80 per unit, while Guinness Nigeria trailed with 80 kobo added to its share value to settle at N17.65 per unit.
Ardova grew by 70 kobo to sell at N12.70 per share, International Breweries gained 53 kobo to close at N5.86 per unit, while GTBank appreciated by 45 kobo to quote at N30.80 per share.
The activity chart was in red on Monday following the decline in the trading volume, value and number of deals by 41.26 per cent, 28.00 per cent and 9.20 per cent respectively.
A total of 287.3 million stocks worth N3.4 billion were traded yesterday in 5,132 deals compared with the 489.1 million equities worth N4.7 billion transacted in 5,652 deals.
Zenith Bank was the most traded stock in the session, exchanging 43.0 million units valued at N905.4 million and was followed by UBA, which transacted 41.7 million units worth N299.1 million.
FBN Holdings traded 32.8 million shares for N206.3 million, GTBank exchanged 26.9 million equities valued at N822.3 million, while Access Bank traded 17.9 million stocks for N142.5 million.
