91% jump in FX turnover sends local currency down 0.18%
By Dipo Olowookere
For the second consecutive session, the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited ended in negative territory after depreciating 0.07% on Wednesday.
Sustained profit taking on industrials stocks like Lafarge Africa and Berger Paints and a few financial stocks like Access Holdings and FBN Holdings contributed to the decline.
This weakened the All-Share Index (ASI) by 35.28 points to 52,721.34 points from 52,756.62 points and dragged the market capitalization down by N19 billion to N28,423 billion against N28.442 billion.
A review of sector performance showed that the Industrials sector depreciated 0.19% yesterday, while the Insurance, Consumer Goods, Energy and Banks sectors appreciated 0.81%. %, 0.29%, 0.19% and 0.10% respectively.
Business post reports that investor sentiment remained weak in the mid-week session as there were 23 depreciating stocks and 21 appreciating stocks, indicating negative market breadth.
Academy Press was the worst performing stock as its value fell 9.93% to N1.36, Berger Paints fell 8.86% to N7.20, Neimeth fell 8.57% to N1, 60, May and Baker fell 8.51. percent to N4.30, while Wema Bank contracted 7.61 percent to N3.28.
On the other hand, McNichols maintained its upward trajectory and gained another 9.94% to trade at N1.77, Transcorp Hotels rose 9.84% to N5.36, Champion Breweries rose improved 7.03% to N3.96, Consolidated Hallmark Insurance rose 6.56% to 65 kobo, while Multiverse gained 4.76% to end at 22 kobo.
FBN Holdings ended the trading day as the most active stock, trading 153.3 million units valued at 1.9 billion naira and was followed by Jaiz Bank, which traded 116.6 million units worth N104.5 million.
GTCO traded 65.9 million shares worth N1.6 billion, FCMB traded 43.5 million shares worth N152.2 million, while Transcorp sold 40 .7 million shares for 57.9 million naira.
Compared to the previous session, the level of activity was lower across all three metrics, with trading volume dropping 53.77% to 612.0 million units from 1.3 billion units, the value of transactions decreased by 3.86% to 7.4 billion naira from 7.7 billion naira, while the number of transactions decreased by 7.77% to 5,948 transactions from 6,449 transactions.