Profit taking pulls ASI to lowest point in 2018… NSE ASI down 45bps 

The performance of the domestic equity market was bearish today as investors continued to book profit on large cap stocks – DANGCEM (-0.9%), INTERBREW (-6.5%), WAPCO (-5.2%) and UBA (-1.0%) – dragging the All Share Index (ASI) 0.5% lower to 37,253.25 points while YTD loss deteriorated to 2.6%. Consequently, investors lost N60.8bn as market capitalisation fell to N13.5 trillion. Activity level was mixed as volume traded increased by 34.7 per cent to 285.1million units while value traded declined by 0.4 per cent to N3.7 billion. The most traded stocks by volume were ACCESS (116.0m), ZENITH (41.1m) and TRANSCORP (23.7m) while the most traded stocks by value were ACCESS (N1.2bn), ZENITH (N1.0bn) and GUARANTY (N0.6bn).

Performance across sectors under our coverage was mixed as 2 of 5 indices closed higher. The Oil & Gas index rose 1.7% following bargain hunting in MOBIL (+9.4%) and FORTE (+4.9%) while the Banking index advanced 1bp on account of buy interest in ZENITH (+0.8%) and UBN (+1.7%). On the flipside, the Industrial Goods index led losers, down 2.3% due to profit taking in DANGCEM (-0.9%) and WAPCO (-5.2%). Furthermore, the Insurance and Consumer Goods indices lost 1.0% and 0.5% respectively on the back of persistent sell pressures in NEM (-5.9%) and INTBREW (-6.5%).

Investor sentiment strengthened as market breadth (as measured by advance/decline ratio) increased to 0.7x from 0.5x recorded yesterday following price appreciation in 17 stocks against 25 stocks that declined. Best performing stocks today were CUSTODIAN (+10.0%), MCNICHOLS (+9.9%) and MOBIL (+9.4%) while JBERGER (-10.0%), THOMASWY (-8.8%) and LINKASSURE (-8.7%) were today’s top underperforming stocks. Despite the bearish performance of today, we noticed some bargain hunting close to the end of trading. Hence, we expect to see a rebound in market performance in subsequnet sessions as investors hunt for bargains.

Market Statistics Wednesday, 11th July 2018

Market Cap (N’bn)                                     13,495.0

Market Cap (US$’bn)                                        44.1

NSE All-Share Index                                  37,253.25

Daily Performance %                                         (0.5)

Week Performance %                                        (0.7)

YTD Performance %                                         (2.6)

Daily Volume (Million)                                      285.1

Daily Value (N’bn)                                                3.7

Daily Value (US$’m)                                           12.2