By Dipo Olowookere
The first trading session of the week closed bearish on Monday, with the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) finishing 0.21 percent lower to expand the year-to-date loss to 13.81 percent.
The loss posted yesterday occurred despite the market breadth closing positive with 15 price gainers led by Seplat and 14 price losers led by Nestle Nigeria.
Nestle Nigeria went down by N69 to finish at N1136 per unit, while Stanbic IBTC depreciated by N1 to settle at N36 per share.
Dangote Sugar lost 25 kobo to close at N8.50k per unit, Oando fell by 19 kobo to end at N3.91k per share, while Access Bank declined by 10 kobo to trade at N6.80k per share.
On the other hand, Seplat added N28.30k to its share price to close at N426 per unit, while UAC Nigeria followed with a gain of 55 kobo to settle at N6.60k per share.
GTBank improved its share value by 35 kobo to close at N26.50k per unit, PZ Cussons appreciated by 30 kobo to trade at N5.90k per share, while FBN Holdings also chalked up 30 kobo to finish at N4.65k per share.
During trading yesterday, the All-Share Index (ASI) depreciated by 56.73 points to close at 27,089.84 points, while the market capitalization reduced by N27.6 billion to finish at N13.179 trillion.
Also, the activity chart was weak on Monday as the volume of transactions went down by 6.67 percent to 290.5 million from 311.3 million, while the value of the trades reduced by 33.27 percent to N4.3 billion from N6.4 billion.
A further analysis of the trades showed that GTBank closed as the most active stock, trading 128.5 million shares worth N3.4 billion, while FBN Holding sold 41.8 million units valued at N183.5 million.
Transcorp transacted 32.9 million shares for N32.9 million, Access Bank traded 23.9 million equities worth N162.7 million, while UAC Nigeria exchanged 10.6 million shares valued at N69.7 million.
A look at the sectoral performance showed that the banking and energy sectors closed positive by 0.51 percent and 2.72 percent respectively.
However, the consumer goods sector fell by 2.86 percent, the insurance sector depreciated by 0.32 percent, while the industrial sector marginally went down by 0.02 percent.
