By Dipo Olowookere
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), as at the close of business on Tuesday, October 8, 2019, has lost 14.70 percent of its value since the beginning of this year, Business Post is reporting.
The local equity market has been facing very difficult challenges since the start of 2019 and predictions that things would get better after the general elections never came to pass.
At today’s session, the market depreciated by 0.21 percent as President Muhammadu Buhari presented the 2020 budget to a joint session of the National Assembly.
Business Post reports that the decline posted by the local bourse today was mainly influenced by the poor performance put up by MTN Nigeria and 13 other equities.
The leading telco topped the losers’ chart after going down by N1.50 to close at N128.50 per unit, while Guinness Nigeria followed with a decline of 40 kobo to settle at N32.50 per share.
Dangote Sugar fell by 30 kobo to end at N10.20 per unit, Dangote Flour depreciated by 15 kobo to finish at N22.30 per share, while Champion Breweries went down by 11 kobo to trade at N1.04 per unit.
At the other side, Mobil Oil Nigeria led the 12 price gainers after adding N7.90 to its share value to finish at N147.90 per share, while NASCON trailed with a price gain of N1.35 to settle at N14.85 per unit.
Forte Oil improved its value by 90 kobo to close at N15.70 per share, GTBank went up by 15 kobo to end at N26.70 per share, while Africa Prudential rose by 13 kobo to settle at N4 per unit.
Despite the loss posted by the NSE on Tuesday, the level of activity improved significantly as the volume and value of transactions increased by 22.56 percent and 68.69 percent respectively.
A total of 185.9 million shares worth N2.5 billion were traded by investors today compared with the 151.7 million equities N1.5 billion transacted in the previous session.
Zenith Bank was the most active with a turnover of 60.9 million units of the bank’s stocks sold for N1.1 billion, while FCMB followed with 37.3 million equities traded for N59.7 million.
GTBank exchanged 27.9 million shares worth N744.4 million, FBN Holdings traded 6.6 million equities valued at N34.7 million, while UBA transacted 5.3 million shares for N31.6 million.
A look at the major market indicators showed that the All-Share Index (ASI) depreciated by 56.49 points to finish at 26,809.92 points, while the market capitalisation went down by N27.5 billion to settle at N13.051 trillion.
An analysis of the sectoral performance indicated that only the consumer goods index closed in the red territory on Tuesday with a 0.09 percent decline.
The energy sector rose by 1.04 percent, the insurance sector appreciated by 0.06 percent, while the banking sector gained 0.05 percent, with the industrial goods sector closing flat at the session.
Adedapo Adesanya