By Dipo Olowookere
About N2 billion was lost by investors on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Thursday ahead of the two-day Christmas holiday declared by the federal government.
The market will be shut on Friday and Monday to celebrate Christmas and Boxing Day, though the latter falls on Saturday, the government declared next Monday work-free day.
At the market yesterday, the market capitalisation of the bourse went down by N2 billion to N20.279 trillion from N20.281 trillion as a result of the selloffs in the shares of Lafarge Africa and seven other stocks like GTBank and UBA.
Lafarge Africa lost N1.05 to settle at N21 per share, GTBank depreciated by 20 kobo to close at N32.80 per unit, Champion Breweries shed 7 kobo to trade at 82 kobo per share, UBA lost 5 kobo to sell at N8.45 per unit, while May & Baker fell by 5 kobo to N3.70 per share.
Business Post reports that the market breadth closed positive yesterday with 23 price gainers led by CAP, which went up by N1.45 to settle at N20.50 per share.
Flour Mills grew by N1.35 to close at N27.95 per unit, Oando grew by 29 kobo to trade at N3.64 per share, SAHCO appreciated by 27 kobo to close at N3.20 per unit, while Africa Prudential gained 13 kobo to end at N6.25 per share.
At the close of transactions, the All-Share Index (ASI) depreciated by 3.73 points to settle at 38,800.01 points as against 38,803.74 points it finished at the previous session.
Yesterday, a total of 389.7 million shares worth N8.0 billion were transacted in 2,925 deals in contrast to the 1.5 billion shares worth N18.8 billion traded in 4,316 deals on Wednesday.
The analysis showed that Zenith Bank was the most active stock with 84.4 million units worth N2.1 billion, while GTBank followed for selling 59.2 million stocks worth N1.9 billion.
Flour Mills traded 56.2 million equities valued at N1.6 billion, Lafarge Africa sold 26.1 million shares worth N556.9 million, while LASACO Assurance transacted 23.0 million shares valued at N7.3 million.
Adedapo Adesanya