By Dipo Olowookere
Trading activities resumed on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) yesterday on a negative note as a result of the offloading of some stocks in the oil and gas space as well as in the industrial sector, especially Dangote Cement.
During the Monday’s session, investors sold off some stocks which have given them a level of returns as a result of the gains of last week, bringing down the market by 0.88 percent to raise the year-to-date loss to 2.22 percent.
As earlier stated, losses were seen in almost all the sectors with the oil & gas index suffering the heaviest decline of 4.55 percent.
The banking space went down by 0.14 percent, while the consumer goods industry was flattish yesterday.
However, the insurance space rose by 1.51 percent, while the industrial index appreciated by 0.97 percent.
At the close of transactions, the All-Share Index (ASI) went down by 272.45 points to settle at 30,732.72 points, while the market capitalisation reduced by N101 billion to finish at N11.461 trillion.
Business Post reports that the market breadth ended negative yesterday on the back of 18 price decliners and 13 price risers, with Seplat suffering the biggest loss after a fall of N46 in its share value to finish at N530 per unit.
Mobil Oil went down by N8 to close at N180 per share, while Dangote Cement depreciated by N4.90k to end at N190 per share.
Lafarge Africa crashed by 40 kobo to close at N12.40k per share, while eTranzact lost 31 kobo to settle at N3.25k per unit.
At the other side, shares of CCNN gained the most yesterday after appreciating by N1.80k to settle at N26.90k per unit.
NEM Insurance continued its rally with 12 kobo added to its share value to finish at N2.60k per share, while FCMB gained 7 kobo to close at N1.83k per share.
Linkage Assurance moved up by 5 kobo to finish at 61 kobo per share, while UBA also improved by 5 kobo to quote at N7.35k per share.
The level of activity improved on Monday with the volume of shares transacted rising by 65.96 percent while the value of the trades rose by 46.92 percent.
A total of 499.2 million equities worth N5.5 billion were traded in 3,874 deals yesterday compared with the 300.8 million units sold for N3.8 billion in 3,317 deals in the previous session.
As in the previous sessions, Diamond Bank remained topped on the activity chart on Monday, selling 239.4 million units of its shares worth N497.9 million.
GTBank sold 119.4 million units valued at N3.8 billion, while Zenith Bank exchanged 26.1 million shares worth N563.2 million.
NEM Insurance transacted 21.2 million shares worth N57.5 million, while FBN Holdings traded 16 million equities for N115.6 million.
