Stock Market Loses N146bn Friday as Investors Pull Out

By Dipo Olowookere

The stock market in Nigeria further lost N146 billion on Friday to profit-taking as investors continue to pull out from the space as a result of rising interest rates at the fixed income environment.

Since the beginning of this week, investors have been showing less appetite for equities and the decision of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to raise the treasury bills rates at the primary auction on Wednesday further compounded the woes of the equity market.

Yesterday, selloffs in the banking and energy counters depressed their respective index by 0.84 per cent and 0.16 per cent, while insurance and consumer goods rose by 0.10 per cent and 0.02 per cent respectively, with the industrial goods closing flat.

At the close of transactions, the All-Share Index (ASI) went down by 279.55 points to 38,921.78 points from 39,201.33 points, while the market capitalisation reduced by N146 billion to N20.279 trillion from N20.425 trillion.

Linkage Assurance was the worst-performing stock at the session with the loss of 6.56 per cent to sell at 57 kobo, Cadbury Nigeria went down by 5.88 per cent to N8.00, NPF Microfinance Bank declined by 5.71 per cent to N1.65, Airtel Africa depleted by 4.67 per cent to N715.00, while Lasaco Assurance fell by 4.41 per cent to N1.30.

However, Veritas Kapital ended the session as the best-performing stock as its share price moved up by 9.52 per cent to 23 kobo, AIICO Insurance gained 4.21 per cent to sell for 99 kobo, Japaul rose by 4.08 per cent to 51 kobo, ABC Transport improved by 2.94 per cent to 35 kobo, while Livestock Feeds went up by 2.88 per cent to N2.14.

Business Post reports that the activity level was low at the final trading session of the week as market participants transacted 154.6 million shares worth N2.3 billion in 3,467 deals as against the 350.6 million shares worth N3.4 billion traded in 3,523 deals on Thursday.

This implied that the trading volume, value and number of deals depreciated yesterday by 55.91 per cent, 32.25 per cent and 1.59 per cent respectively.

UBA was the most traded stock with the sale of 15.3 million shares worth N116.7 million, GTCO transacted 12.2 million equities valued at N328.6 million, Linkage Assurance sold 11.7 million stocks for N7.0 million, Access Bank traded 11.3 million shares worth N105.1 million, while Fidelity Bank transacted 10.8 million equities valued at N24.8 million.