By Dipo Olowookere
Activities resumed on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Monday, but when the market closed for the day, it was pointing south.
The poor performance of the NSE yesterday, which was in contrast to the gains of last session on Friday, was caused by profit taking by investors in the later part of the day. The market was looking like it would sustain the rally of Friday until it succumbed to selling pressure.
By the time the closing gong was hit, the NSE was down by 0.40 percent, expanding the year-to-date loss to 11.52 percent.
This also resulted in the reduction of the All-Share Index (ASI) by 110.81 points to finish at 27,808.69 points, while the market capitalisation decreased by N54 billion to close at N13.553 trillion.
During transactions yesterday, the stock market closed with a total of 19 price losers as against the 14 price gainers recorded, leaving the market breadth negative.
Nigerian Breweries emerged as the heaviest price loser at the market on Monday after going down by N2.90k to finish at N56.10k per share.
It was followed by MTN Nigeria, which went down by N2 to close at N126 per unit, and NASCON, which fell by N1.50k to settle at N13.50k per share.
C & Leasing and Flour Mills dropped 40 kobo each from their share prices to end at N4.55k and N14 respectively.
During trading yesterday, stocks in the financial sector dominated with 164.1 million units traded for N1.2 billion, with the ICT equities following after transacting 52.4 million shares worth N194 million.
Individually, Courtville dominated the activity chart after turning over a total of 49.8 million shares worth N10 million, with Sterling Bank trading 46 million equities for N104.5 million.
UBA exchanged 33.8 million shares valued at N191.7 million, Transcorp sold 31.1 million units for N30.3 million, while Zenith Bank traded 16 million equities worth N295.8 million.
At the end of the day, investors traded a total of 285.8 million equities worth N2.2 billion in contrast to the 274.2 million shares worth N2.8 billion transacted last Friday. This indicated that the volume of equities traded yesterday increased by 4.21 percent, while the value went down 21.08 percent.
Adedapo Adesanya