The Nigerian bourse recorded a loss for the second consecutive day on Thursday, as the All Share Index (ASI) dipped by 0.31% to close at 28,546.22. ASI was dragged by the losses in bellwether stocks like DANGCEM (-4.75%), NB (-7.07%), BUACEMENT (-0.84%) etcetera which outweighed the gains in UNILEVER (+9.76%), GUARANTY (+3.23%), (ZENITHBANK (+2.81%), and AIRTELAFRI (+2.50%) among others.
Thursday’s decline is the second decline in 14 straight trading days taking the YTD return to +6.35%.
Similarly, the market capitalization dropped to N14.921 trillion as investors lost N46.064 billion.
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Activity level
The activity level weakened as the volume and value of traded shares declined by 31.64% and 48.50% to 569.377 million and N4.914 billion respectively.
Four out of the top five most traded equities by volume on Thursday were banking stocks. ETERNA also the top gainer, lead the activity level by volume with 112.890 million shares valued at N372.533 million traded in just 29 deals. It is followed by ZENITHBANK with 74.231 million units and ACCESS with 57.062 million units.
In terms of value, ZENITHBANK took the lead followed by GUARANTY, and ACCESS.
Performance of Indices
Only two out of the five indices under our watch recorded gains, with the banking index displaying the best performance.
- The Banking Index was up by 2.88%
- The Insurance Index increased by 1.29%
- The Industrial Goods Index lost 2.72%
- Consumer Goods Index dropped by 1.30%
- The Oil and Gas Index dipped by 0.53%
Investor sentiment
Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (gain/loss ratio) settled at 1.6x as the number of gainers (26) surpassed the number of losers (17).
The top five gainers by percentage and closing prices are;
- ETERNA rose by 10.00% to close at N3.30
- UNILEVER rose by 9.76% to close at N13.50
- ETI rose by 8.54% to close at N4.45
- MANSARD rose by 7.18% to close at N1.94
- CILEASING rose by 5.95% to close at N4.45
The top five decliners by percentage are;
- DEAPCAP lost 10.00% to close at N0.27
- MBENEFIT lost 8.70% to close at N0.21
- CORNERST lost 8.33% to close at N0.55
- NB lost 7.07% to close at N48.60
- CONOIL lost 5.57% to close at N14.40
Naira appreciated by N1.00 against the dollar to N457/$1 on Thursday at the parallel market.
Global Market performance;
All major Global Indices recorded gains except for Hang Seng (-0.02%) and Shanghai (-0.02%). Other selected indices performance are as follows;
- Dow Jones is gaining 0.37%
- S&P 500 is up 0.74%
- NASDAQ 100 is up 0.34%
- FTSE 100 gained 0.53%
- DAX was up by 0.88%
- NIKKEI 225 closed up by 0.96%
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
