The Nigerian equity market opened the week on a negative note as the All Share Index fell for the fourth consecutive trading days on Monday. The market has been on a slow but steady decline since the record gains on Tuesday 6 October 2020.
The ASI dipped by 0.27% to close at 28,337.49, due to the losses in bell-whether stocks like BUACEMENT (-1.45%), MTNN (-0.36%), FLOURMILL (-4.55%), GUARANTY (-0.33%), ZENITHBANK (-0.25%).
The market capitalization settled to N14.812 trillion taking the YTD return to 5.57%
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Activity level
The activity level was mixed with the total volume of traded shares declining by 3.9% to 360.178 million units while the value rose by 26.5% to N5.060 billion in 4,750 deals.
Transaction in the shares of United Bank for Africa topped the activity chart with 95.05 million shares valued at N678.74 million.
It was followed by Guaranty Trust Bank with 65.48 million shares worth N1.99 billion, and Zenith Bank with 47.22 million shares valued at N944.31 million.
The fourth most traded equity was FBNH which accounted for 7.62 million shares worth N231.89 million, while Transcorp transacted 28.12 million shares valued at N18.17 million.
Performance of Indices
All the indices under our watch closed in red except for the Oil and Gas Index. The Oil and Gas Index closed positively due to a 9.92% rise in ETERNA and 2.44% increase in SEPLAT.
- The Oil and Gas Index up by 1.36%
- The Insurance Index increased by 1.78%
- Consumer Goods Index dropped by 0.91%
- The Industrial Goods Index lost 0.54%
- The Banking Index was down by 0.06%
Investor sentiment
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (gain/loss ratio) settled at 0.81x as the number of losers (16) surpassed the number of gainers (13).
The top five gainers by percentage and closing prices are;
- ETERNA rose by 9.92% to close at N3.99
- UNIONDAC rose by 8.33% to close at N0.26
- TRANSCORP rose by 4.84% to close at N0.65
- CUTIX rose by 4.65% to close at N1.80
- SEPLAT rose by 2.44% to close at N420.00
The top five decliners by percentage are;
- INTBREW lost 9.11% to close at N4.29
- MANSARD lost 5.67% to close at N1.83
- FLOURMILL lost 4.55% to close at N21.00
- REGALINS lost 4.35% to close at N0.22
- PORTPAINT lost 3.59% to close at N2.15
Naira fell by N3.00 against the dollar to N460/$1 on Monday at the parallel market.
Global Market performance;
All major Global Indices recorded gains except for London FTSE 100 which declined by 0.25% and Tokyo Nikkei 225 which dipped by 0.25% Other selected indices performance are as follows;
- Dow Jones up by 0.88%
- S&P 500 is up 1.64%
- NASDAQ 100 is up 3.09%
- DAX was up by 0.67%
- Shanghai up by 2.64%
- Hang Seng up 2.20%
Oil prices fell on Monday with Brent trading at $41.78 per barrel and WTI at $39.49 per barrel.
Analysts’ view
As the release of Q3 2020 earnings is around the corner, we expect continued interest in fundamentally sound stocks, as investors take cautious positions ahead of the earnings release season amid potential profit-taking.
By; Ifunanya Ikueze
