By Dipo Olowookere
For the third consecutive day this week, the local stock exchange ended in the negative region, closing 1.17 percent lower on Thursday to shrink the Year-to-Date (YtD) gain to -0.24 percent at the close of business.
Business Post reports that profit taking activities took over the market and stocks in the oil and gas, banking and industrial goods sectors suffered for it.
At the close of trading activities, the market breadth ended negative with 26 price gainers and 28 price losers.
Just like the previous session, Seplat suffered the heaviest depreciation, going down by N32.20k today to close at N685 per share.
It was followed by Dangote Cement, which went down by N8.70k to finish at N230.30k per share, and CCNN, which declined by N1.20k to end at N24 per share.
PZ Cussons shrank by 80 kobo to close at N19.95k per share, while GTBank fell by 60 kobo to settle at N40.05k per share.
On the flip side, it was a sweet day for Nigerian Breweries as its shares increased by N3 to settle at N112 per share.
It was trailed by Presco, which grew by N1.50k to close at N73.50k per share, and Lafarge, which appreciated by N1 to end at N40 per share.
Guinness Nigeria went up by 50 kobo to settle at N97.50k per share, while Custodian and Allied improved by 25 kobo to close at N5.26k per share.
The All-Share Index (ASI) reduced by 452.47 points today to close at 38,152.60 points, while the market capitalisation shed N163.9 billion to settle at N13.821 trillion.
It was observed that the volume of shares traded by investors on Thursday increased by 1.36 percent, while the value of trades rose 7.16 percent.
A total of 271.4 million equities exchanged hands today in 3,766 deals worth N4.1 billion compared with the 267.8 million shares sold yesterday in 4,786 deals valued at N3.8 billion.
Shares of FBN Holdings attracted the attention of investors the most today with a total of 37.3 million units of the stock sold for N394.9 million.
It was followed by Fidelity Bank, which traded 29.5 million equities for N66.4 million, and GTBank, which exchanged 28.4 million units worth N1.2 billion.
Sterling Bank sold 18.1 million shares valued at N24.6 million, while Prestige Assurance transacted 17 million shares worth N11.2 million.
Business Post reports that by the time market closed on Thursday, the Financial Services sector led the activity chart with 199.5 million shares traded for ₦2.2 billion, while the Conglomerates sector followed with 17.4 million equities exchanged for N56 million.
