By Dipo Olowookere
The Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited suffered a 0.02 per cent loss on Monday as a result of profit-taking in consumer goods stocks like Flour Mills and Dangote Sugar.
This heavily impacted the consumer goods sector, closing lower by 0.41 per cent at the close of transactions yesterday. The counter was the only decliner of the five major sectors of the market.
The banking index appreciated by 0.48 per cent, the energy counter rose by 0.32 per cent, the insurance sector improved by 0.04 per cent, while the industrial goods counter grew by 0.03 per cent.
Business Post reports that when the market ended for the day, the All-Share Index (ASI) went down by 8.12 points to 39,252.89 points from 39,261.01 points, while the market capitalisation depreciated by N5 billion to N20.451 trillion from N20.456 trillion.
The market breadth closed positive yesterday despite the poor outcome, which was also partly due to selloff in Stanbic IBTC Holdings as a result of its disappointing half-year results.
There were 21 appreciating stocks at the session as against the 15 depreciating stocks led by GlaxoSmithKline, which lost 9.56 per cent to sell for N6.15.
Consolidated Hallmark Insurance declined by 8.62 per cent to 53 kobo, Sovereign Trust Insurance went down by 7.69 per cent to 24 kobo, May & Baker lost 6.67 per cent to trade at N4.48, while University Press shrank by 6.03 per cent to N1.09.
Conversely, Linkage Assurance topped the gainers’ chart with a price appreciation of 8.93 per cent to settle at 61 kobo, FTN Cocoa gained 8.89 per cent to quote at 49 kobo, Mutual Benefits Assurance appreciated by 7.14 per cent to 30 kobo, Ecobank rose by 5.77 per cent to N5.50, while Universal Insurance chalked up 5.00 per cent to close at 21 kobo.
A look at the activity chart showed that it was mixed on the first trading day of the week, with the value of transactions going down by 19.74 per cent to N1.4 billion from N1.7 billion of the previous session.
However, the volume of equities traded during the session rose by 17.00 per cent to 211.0 million units from 180.3 million units, while the number of deals increased by 26.31 per cent to 3,989 deals from 3,158 deals.
Access Bank was the busiest stock at the market on Monday with the sale of 30.5 million units valued at N282.2 million, Mutual Benefits Assurance sold 26.8 million units for N8.0 million, Sovereign Trust Insurance exchanged 21.4 million units for N5.1 million, Universal Insurance traded 13.0 million units valued at N2.6 million, while Honeywell Flour transacted 12.9 million units worth N48.0 million.
