By Dipo Olowookere
After recording gains in the past trading sessions, investors at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) felt it was time the right time to book profit and on Wednesday, it happened.
The profit-taking depleted the nation’s stock market by 0.26 per cent at the midweek session, reducing the All-Share Index (ASI) by 90.80 points to 35,056.82 points from 35,147.62 points. It also deflated the market capitalisation yesterday by N42 billion to N18.323 trillion from N18.365 trillion.
Business Post reports that the consumer goods sector was the worst hit on Wednesday as it went down by 1.81 per cent and was followed by the banking counter, which lost 0.80 per cent and the energy index, which fell by 0.72 per cent and the industrial goods space, which depreciated by 0.02 per cent. Only the insurance sector was the gainer of the session as it went up by 0.29 per cent.
The investor sentiment remained negative yesterday as the market closed with 22 price losers and 19 price gainers.
Nigerian Breweries was the day’s heaviest loser as its equity price went down by N4.25 to settle at N56 per unit, while CAP lost N1.50 to close at N20 per share.
GTBank depreciated by 90 kobo to N34.10 per unit, Northern Nigerian Flour Mills lost 67 kobo to trade at N6.26 per unit, while Flour Mills decreased by 60 kobo to N27 per share.
On top of the gainers’ chart yesterday was Stanbic IBTC after it added N1.65 kobo to its share value to close at N44 per unit and was trailed by UBA, which gained 45 kobo to sell at N8.65 per share.
Cutix appreciated by 12 kobo to N1.80 per unit, May & Baker rose by 10 kobo to N3.50 per share, while AIICO Insurance also grew by 10 kobo to N1.11 per share.
At the midweek session, the trading volume rose by 19.72 per cent to 369.0 million units from 308.2 million units, the trading value increased by 61.37 per cent to N5.5 billion from N3.4 billion, while the number of deals jumped by 1.84 per cent to 4,598 deals from 4,515 deals.
