By Dipo Olowookere
The bears have refused to give the bulls a breathing space on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and for the sixth consecutive session, the local equity market suffered a loss on Tuesday.
The heavy profit-taking by investors weakened the local bourse further by 0.35 percent, reducing the All-Share Index (ASI) by 101.13 points to 28,432.27 points and the market capitalisation by N52 billion to N14.645 trillion.
Only seven stocks appreciated in price yesterday as 23 equities closed in red led by CAP, which lost N2.40 to settle at N22.60 per unit.
Dangote Sugar depreciated by N1.35 to sell at N12.45 per unit, Zenith Bank lost 70 kobo to finish at N19.20 per share, UAC Nigeria depreciated by 45 kobo to trade at N8.50 per unit, while GTBank fell by 40 kobo to sell at N29 per share.
At the other end, Union Bank led the gainers’ chart with a price appreciation of 60 kobo to trade at N6.60 per unit, while Julius Berger rose by 30 kobo to quote at N21.50 per share.
Law Union and Rock Insurance improved by 7 kobo to trade at 84 kobo per unit, Wapic Insurance appreciated by 3 kobo to trade at 33 kobo per share, while Transcorp moved up by 2 kobo to sell at 99 kobo per unit.
Transaction volume improved on Tuesday by 1.30 percent to 254.9 million from 251.6 million, while the trading value depreciated by 3.44 percent to N3.0 billion from N3.2 billion, with the number of deals rising by 9.41 percent to 5,199 deals from 4,752 deals recorded on Monday.
Zenith Bank was the busiest stock yesterday, trading 68.5 million units worth N1.3 billion, while FBN Holdings exchanged 32.7 million units valued at N193.7 million.
Access Bank transacted 28.8 million shares worth N259.6 million, UBA traded 23.6 million equities for N174.6 million, while GTBank sold 12.3 million stocks worth N384.7 million.
The sectoral performance showed that all the five major subsectors of the market closed in red, with banking index suffering the deepest wound after a decline of 1.09 percent.
The insurance index fell by 0.65 percent, consumer goods index declined by 0.82 percent, oil and gas index depreciated by 0.18 percent, while industrial goods index went down by 0.08 percent.
