Equities Open the Week Lower… NSE ASI down 0.4%

The Equities market opened the week on a negative note as the benchmark index contracted 0.4 per cent to close at 35,361.52 points while the YTD gain retreated to 31.6 per cent. Resultantly, investors lost N44.8 billion as market capitalisation settled at N12.2 trillion. The drag in today’s performance was majorly on account of losses recorded in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-1.8%), UBA (-3.0%) and WAPCO (-2.9%). Similarly, activity level waned as volume and value traded plunged 44.3 per cent and 62.8 per cent to 107.1m units and N1.4 billion respectively.

The Industrial Goods index led sector decliners with a 1.1 per cent decrease owing to profit taking in WAPCO (-2.9%). The Consumer Goods index trailed with a loss of 0.8 per cent as a result of declines in NIGERIAN BREWERIES (-1.8%) and NESTLE (-0.4%) while the Banking index fell 0.5 per cent due to price deprecation in UBA (-3.0%) and GUARANTY (-0.3%). Contrarily, an uptick in TOTAL (+2.7%) buoyed the Oil & Gas index 0.3% northward while the Insurance index marginally climbed 0.1% on the back of gains in MANSARD (+0.5%).

Market breadth, a measure of investor sentiment, retreated to 1.2x from 1.5x recorded on Friday after 19 stocks advanced against 16 decliners. The top performers were FIDSON (+5.0%), AIRSERVICE (+5.0%) and CUSTODYINS (+4.9%) while the worst performers were SKYEBANK (-3.6%), NEIMETH (-3.2%) and UBA (-3.0%). Despite the profit-taking which dragged the market, we expect performance to turn positive before the end of the week as investors take position ahead of third quarter 2017 company scorecards releases.

Market Statistics Monday, 25th September 2017
Market Cap (N’bn)                                          12,188.9
Market Cap (US$’bn)                                            39.9
NSE All-Share Index                                      35,361.52
Daily Performance %                                             (0.4)
Week Performance %                                             1.5
YTD Performance %                                             31.6
Daily Volume (Million)                                         107.1
Daily Value (N’bn)                                                  1.4
Daily Value (US$’m)                                              4.5