The value of the Nigerian Stock Market took a heavy nosedive as the new week transactions which commenced on Monday, October 17, was rocked by high sell orders which scraped off N78 billion from the market values of quoted companies.
As such, aggregate market value of all quoted equities on the bourse closed the first trading session of the week at N9.492 trillion, down by N78 billion from its opening value of N9.570 trillion.
Most sectoral indices showed widespread sell-off across the sectors. The NSE Oil & Gas index declined by 2.08 per cent. The NSE Consumer Goods Index dropped by 1.6 per cent. The NSE Banking Index depreciated by 0.9 per cent while the NSE Industrial Goods Index slipped by 0.1 per cent. However, the NSE Insurance Index inched up by 0.1 per cent.
Forte Oil led the 24-stock losers’ list with a loss of N7.25 to close at N137.87. Seplat Petroleum Development Company followed with a loss of N5.88 to close at N380. Nigerian Breweries dropped by N4.65 to close at N144.05. GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Nigeria lost 91 kobo to close at N17.48 while Cadbury Nigeria dropped by 78 kobo to close at N14.89 per share.
On the flip side hand, there were only seven gainers. Africa Prudential Registrars and Wema Bank led with a marginal gain of 4.0 kobo each to close at N2.72 and 66 kobo respectively. FCMB Group followed with a gain of 3.0 kobo to close at N1.14. Wapic Insurance added 2.0 kobo to close at 52 kobo while Fidson Healthcare, Skye Bank and Nascon Allied Industries inched up by 1.0 kobo each to close at N1.59, 63 kobo and N8.01 respectively.
Total turnover stood at 255.80 million shares valued at N778.44 million in 2,588 deals. Penny stocks dominated the top activities chart. The three most active stocks were Law Union and Rock, with 100 million shares; Transnational Corporation of Nigeria, 49.56 million shares and Costain, with 32.06 million shares.
