By Dipo Olowookere
Activities at the nation’s stock market closed bearish on Monday, causing some equities to further bleed at the close of transactions on the first trading day of the new week.
Business Post reports that a total of nine stocks traded at 52-week lows during the session as investors continued to selloffs due to global uncertainties caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Nigeria recorded its first death from the COVID-19 yesterday and this further made some traders to press the panic button, offloading their portfolios in order not to be caught in a tight corner.
This resulted in the 2.24 percent lost by the market, which led to the reduction of the All-Share Index (ASI) by 497.45 points to 21,700.98 points from 22,198.43 points and the trimming of the market capitalisation by N259 trillion to N11.309 trillion from N11.568 trillion.
The market breadth closed negative at the session, with 25 price losers as against 9 price gainers. Out of the price decliners, nine, as earlier stated, had their share prices trading at the lowest levels in almost a year.
These stocks were Nigerian Breweries at N27, Stanbic IBTC at N23.85, GTBank at N16.75, Zenith Bank at N10.70, Unilever Nigeria at N10.50, Lafarge Africa at N9.10, International Breweries at N5, UBA at N4.50 and Transcorp at 56 kobo.
On the price movement chart, Nigerian Breweries was the highest price loser. The company’s stock value decreased by N3 to N27 per unit, while Stanbic IBTC fell by N2.65 to N23.85 each.
GTBank lost N1.85 at the market yesterday to sell at N16.75 per share, Zenith Bank depreciated by N1.15 to settle at N10.70 per unit, while Unilever Nigeria also went down by N1.15 to N10.50 per share.
On the flip side, CAP was the best performing equity at the market on Monday, gaining N1.50 to trade at N21 per unit, while the shares of Flour Mills also increased by N1.50 to N20.80 per unit.
Custodian Investment improved by 45 kobo to sell at N5.65 per share, May & Baker grew by 16 kobo to N1.95 per unit, while Vitafoam appreciated by 11 kobo to N4.25 per share.
The activity chart showed an improvement, with 22.37 percent rise in trading volume, 12.89 percent growth in the trading value and 26.00 percent increase in the number of stocks traded by investors at the session.
According to data from the exchange, 464.4 million shares worth N3.9 billion exchanged hands on Monday in 5,883 deals compared with the 379.5 million equities valued at N3.4 billion transacted in 4,669 deals last Friday.
The low prices of stocks at the market gave room for investors to mop up some value stocks during the trading day. Zenith Bank closed for the day as the most active equity, trading 120.5 million units worth N1.3 billion.
GTBank transacted 63.3 million shares valued at N1.1 billion, FBN Holdings traded 46.7 million stocks for N176.1 million, Access Bank sold 31.0 million shares worth N173.2 million, while UBA exchanged 29.2 million stocks for N136.1 million.
Business Post reports that all the five key sectors of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) printed losses on Monday, with the banking counter emerging the worst hit after going down by 9.00 percent.
The consumer goods index lost 3.61 percent, the insurance sector depreciated by 1.47 percent, the oil/gas counter fell by 0.83 percent, while the industrial goods index decreased by 0.79 percent.
Adedapo Adesanya