Investors began unbundling certain high-cap shares, lead by selloffs in Dangote Cement, one of the major movers on the local exchange, and this caused the equities segment of the Nigerian Exchange, or NGX, to plunge into the red.
As a result, the All-share index (ASI) reversed course and closed at 52,615.51 points, shedding almost 16 basis points from its prior position. According to stockbrokers, sell pressure on Consumer Goods counters and heavyweight Industrial Goods stocks was the main cause of the poor performance.
Key performance metrics are therefore in decline while the year-to-date return has decreased to 2.7%. Market sentiment was negative (0.8x), as indicated by market breadth, with 21 tickers losing opposed to 17 gainers.
The overall amount traded, valued at NGN4.47 billion and exchanged in 3,377 trades, decreased by 4.6% to 217.95 million units. The most actively traded stock by volume was STERLNBANK, with 94.27 million units moved, while the most actively traded stock by value was GEREGU, with NGN1.35 billion.
In contrast to AIRTELAFRI and GTCO’s increases of 0.63% and 1.03%, DANGSUGAR and INTBREW each had losses of 2.00%. The overall amount traded shrank by 4.6% to 218.0 million even though market turnover climbed by 0.63% to N4.5 billion.
While GEREGU (-0.14%) was the most actively traded counter on a value basis, exchanging 10.1 million units for N1.4 billion (30.3% of today’s value transaction), STERLNBANK (-1.30%) dominated the volume log with 94.3 million units (43.3% of market volume).
Dangote subsidiaries also suffered losses, with DANGCEM losing 1.85% of its market value and DANGSUGAR losing 2.00% per share. Additionally, the indexes for Industrial and Consumer Goods both fell, down 0.99% and 0.20 correspondingly.
Positively, after gains in CHIPLC (+9.52%), MRS (+3.23%), and GTCO (+1.03%), respectively, the Insurance (+1.36%), Oil & Gas (+0.07%), and Banking (+0.05%) indexes rose.
