Investors Continue to Abandon Nigerian Stocks as OMO Bills Yields Rise

By Dipo Olowookere

For the first time in a long period, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) recorded losses in every single trading session of the week.

On Friday, the market depreciated by 0.18 per cent as investors offloaded some stocks so as to try their luck with the fixed income and the cryptocurrency markets.

A day earlier, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) shocked the market when it pushed the rates of the Open Market Operations (OMO) bills to double-digits.

This development made some investors reduce their stake in the equity market, causing the bourse’s All-Share Index (ASI) to shorten by 76.71 points to 41,709.09 points from 41,785.80 points. This also sliced the market capitalisation of the NSE by N40 billion to N21.819 trillion from N21.859 trillion.

Business Post reports that apart from the banking index, which grew by 1.36 per cent yesterday, every other sector closed bearish with the insurance index going down by 1.03 per cent, the consumer goods sector lost 0.97 per cent, the industrial goods space fell by 0.26 per cent, while the energy counter dropped 0.13 per cent.

On the activity chart, the number of deals executed on Friday increased by 26.19 per cent to 5,998 deals from 4,753 deals, while the volume of shares declined by 23.39 per cent to 482.2 million from 629.4 million, with the value of shares transacted by investors reducing by 30.09 per cent to N5.6 billion from N8.0 billion.

The most traded stock yesterday was Union Bank as the banking firm traded 78.2 million units valued at N453.7 million and was trailed by Zenith Bank, which exchanged 52.8 million equities worth N1.4 billion.

Transcorp transacted 31.2 million shares for N31.3 million, UBA sold 26.9 million equities valued at N229.5 million, while Courtville traded 25.8 million stocks worth N5.2 million.

On the price movement table, the quartet of Total Nigeria, MTN Nigeria, Lafarge Africa and Dangote Sugar lost N1 each to settle at N142 per share, N180 per unit, N26.65 per share and N20 per unit respectively, while Zenith Bank depreciated by 75 kobo to finish at N26 per share.

On the flip side, the buying pressure on GTBank pushed its share price higher by N3 to N36 per unit, while bargain hunting Northern Nigerian Flour Mills expanded the value of its equities by 77 kobo to N8.65 per share.

Livestock Feeds grew by 9 kobo to settle at N2.39 per unit, while the duo of FTN Cocoa and Jaiz Bank appreciated by 4 kobo each to end at 52 kobo per share and 72 kobo per unit respectively.