Dipo Olowookere
By Dipo Olowookere
The decline in the shares of UAC Nigeria, Geregu Power and eight others weakened the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited on Thursday by 0.02 per cent.
The marginal fall recorded by the exchange came despite an improvement in investor sentiment, which was positive yesterday as there were 13 appreciating equities at the close of transactions.
However, the fallers impacted the outcome of the bourse significantly. Consequently, they softened the All-Share Index (ASI) by 7.46 per cent to 47,524.38 points from 47,531.84 points as the market capitalisation depreciated by N4 billion to N25.885 trillion from N25.889 trillion.
Business Post observed that financial stocks tried to revive the market on Thursday by attracting investors, but shares in the consumer goods space truncated this.
The banking index rose by 0.93 per cent, the insurance counter appreciated by 0.22 per cent, while the consumer goods and energy sectors depreciated by 0.07 per cent each, with the industrial goods counter closing flat.
When the market closed for the day, UACN fell by 9.76 per cent to N9.25, Geregu lost 9.02 per cent to trade at N110.00, Lasaco Assurance depreciated by 6.67 per cent to 84 Kobo, Cornerstone Insurance fell by 5.45 per cent to 52 Kobo, and Champion Breweries declined by 3.33 per cent to N3.48.
On the other hand, Honeywell Flour bounced back to winning ways with a 9.79 per cent growth to close at N2.13. Neimeth improved by 9.52 per cent to N1.38, Fidson grew by 7.88 per cent to N9.17, Chams gained 7.69 per cent to finish at 28 Kobo, and Livestock Feeds climbed higher by 6.80 per cent to N1.10.
The market was relatively quiet on Thursday as investors were cautious of happenings in the macroeconomic environment. They are also on the lookout for the inflation numbers from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) this weekend.
With the current figure at 20.52 per cent and the anchor interest rate at 15.50 per cent, stocks have not been attractive to many because it might be difficult to get returns that could beat inflation in a short time.
A total of 86.6 million equities valued at N2.1 billion were transacted during the session in 3,264 deals, in contrast to the 155.2 million equities worth N3.7 billion transacted in 3,797 deals a day earlier. This indicated that the trading volume fell by 44.23 per cent, the trading value dropped by 42.83 per cent, and the number of deals went down by 14.04 per cent.
