Dipo Olowookere
By Dipo Olowookere
Trading activities resumed on Tuesday on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) after the Easter break observed on last Friday and yesterday.
However, by the time the transactions closed today, the market finished on a bearish note as a result of losses recorded by some key stocks in the Industry Goods sector, Dangote Cement and Lafarge Africa.
Business Post reports that the local bourse ended 1.56 percent lower, with the Year-to-Date (YtD) returns shrinking to 6.83 percent. This was against the 1.72 percent gain recorded at the last trading day on Thursday.
In addition, the market breadth closed negative after the stock market finished with 13 price gainers against the 36 price losers.
The biggest price faller was Dangote Cement, which went down by N9 to settle at N251 per share, and was followed by Lafarge, which fell by N1.85k to end at N43.45k per share.
GTBank lost N1.30k today to finish at N43.40k per share, Forte Oil declined by N1.20k to close at N40.80k per share, and Nigerian Breweries depreciated by N1.10k to settle at N128.90k per share.
At the other end, GlaxoSmithKline led the gainers’ chart after appreciating by 85k to settle at N34.85k per share.
It was trailed by Ecobank, which moved up by 65k to close at N17 per share, and Zenith Bank, which increased by 50k to end at N29.80k per share.
NASCON also went up by 50k to finish at N21.50k per share, while Caverton improved by 24k to end at N2.91k per share.
Despite the poor performance of the stock market on Tuesday, the volume and value of transactions appreciated by 34.21 percent and 68.89 percent respectively.
The Financial Services sector led the activity chart today with 262.2 million shares sold for N3.8 billion, while the Conglomerates sector followed with 63 million shares worth 153 million transacted by investors.
In all, a total of 365.7 million equities worth N6.3 billion exchanged hands on Tuesday in 4,173 deals compared with the 272.6 million shares traded last Thursday in 4,368 deals valued at N3.7 billion.
Looking at the market indices today, the All-Share Index (ASI) shed 648.87 points to settle at 40,855.64 points, while the market capitalisation decreased by N234.4 billion to close at N14.759 trillion.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) commenced its first Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting today and tomorrow, the bank is expected to announce key rates and this development may likely influence the market.
