Nigerian Stock market records another Bearish outing… ASI Dips 1.1%

As both institutional and retail investors are planning for the Christmas and the new year sell off of shares to raise funds to finance the festivities and pay returning students school fess is at play at the market. The equities market recorded a loss as the ASI dipped 111bps to settle at 26,384.21 points due to sell-offs in NESTLE (-3.7%), MTNN (-1.7%) and DANGCEM (-1.4%). Consequently, YTD performance worsened to -16.1 per cent while market capitalisation fell by N143.4 billion to N12.7 trillion. Activity level advanced as volume and value traded rose 1.9 per cent and 0.1 per cent to 196.3 million units and N3.6 billion respectively. The most active stocks by volume were GUARANTY (49.2m units), ACCESS (21.0m units) and TRANSCORP (14.1m units) while GUARANTY (N1.4bn), NESTLE (N622.2m) and DANGCEM (N307.0m) led by value.

There was a bloodbath across sectors as all indices lost save the Oil & Gas index which closed flat. The Consumer Goods index (-2.0%) waned the most following price declines in NESTLE (-3.7%) and UNILEVER (-2.1%). Sell pressures in MTNN (-1.7%), UBN (-5.7%) and FBNH (-1.6%) dragged the AFR-ICT (-1.0%) and Banking (-0.9%) indices down. The Industrial Goods (-0.6%) and Insurance (-0.3%) indices also closed in the red due to losses in DANGCEM (-1.4%), CHIPLC (-5.1%) and WAPIC (-2.8%).

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) rose to 0.3x from the 0.2x recorded in yesterday’s session as 8 stocks gained relative to 23 decliners. The top performing stocks were ROYALEX (+7.4%), FCMB (+4.0%) and EKOCORP (+3.8%) while DAARCOMM (-10.0%), ARBICO (-10.0%) and CORNERSTONE (-8.8%) led losers. We expect to see sustained bearish outing in the market. However, opportunities for bargain hunting are eminent.

Market Statistics for Tuesday, 10th December, 2019