Equity Market extends bearish run… NSE ASI down 4bps

The local bourse opened the week on a negative note as the All Share Index shed 4bps to close at 41,454.30 points while YTD return closed at 8.4 per cent. Today’s bearish performance was largely due to profit taking in GUARANTY (-3.4%), UNILEVER (-5.0%) and SEPLAT (-3.0%). Consequently, market capitalisation declined to N15.0 trillion as investors lost N5.9 billion in value. In the same vein, activity level weakened as volume and value traded fell 32.2% and 24.1% to 379.9m units and N5.1 billion respectively. ACCESS (77.9m), ZENITH (58.4m) and UBA (44.0m) were the top traded stocks by volume while ZENITH (N1.8bn), ACCESS (N885.1m) and NESTLE (N548.3m) were the top traded stocks by value.

Performance across sectors was largely bearish as 3 of 5 indices trended southwards, while 2 closed in the green. The Oil & Gas index led laggards, down 2.5% following price depreciation in SEPLAT (-3.0%). The Industrial Goods index trailed, shedding 2.0% due to sell offs in WAPCO (-4.0%) followed by the Banking index which fell 0.4% on the back of losses in GUARANTY (-3.4%) and DIAMOND (-4.7%). On the flipside, the Insurance and Consumer Goods indices gained 1.3% and 0.3% respectively driven by buying interest in NEM (+2.2%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+1.9%), NESTLE (+0.2%) and DANGSUGAR (+0.7%).

Investor sentiment measured by market breath (advance/decline) ratio improved to 2.0x from 0.7x recorded the preceding Friday as 34 stocks advanced relative to 17 stocks that declined. The top performing stocks were GLAXOSMITH (+10.0%), CUSTODIAN (+10.0%) and MULTIVERSE (+9.5%) while FORTE (-9.1%), ROYALEX (-6.1%) and UNILEVER (-5.0%) were the worst performing stocks. Despite the negative performance today, investor sentiment strengthened, thus we anticipate a rebound in market performance in subsequent sessions as investors continue to seek for bargain opportunities.

Market Statistics Monday, 26th March 2018
Market Cap (N’bn)                                          14,975.6
Market Cap (US$’bn)                                             48.9
NSE All-Share Index                                      41,454.30
Daily Performance %                                             (0.0)
Week Performance %                                            (0.9)
YTD Performance %                                               8.4
Daily Volume (Million)                                         379.9
Daily Value (N’bn)                                                   5.1
Daily Value (US$’m)                                             16.8