Nigerian stock market daily report: NB, CAP, GUARANTY drag market into loss as Penny stocks rebound

As expected to occure in the course of the week, The Nigerian Stock Exchange saw the first decline of its benchmark index in December on Wednesday. The NSE All-Share Index declined by 0.26% to close at 35,056.82 points, with the market capitalization shedding N41.971 billion to settle at N18.364 trillion.

• Have you read?
• Recapitalization of Resort Savings & Loans Plc still work in progress
• Alleged NBC N2.9b Fraud: Defendant Loses in Application against EFCC

Loses in high and medium cap. stocks like NB, CAP, GUARANTY, FLOURMILL, ARDOVA, ZENITHBANK, and DANGSUGAR amongst others contributed to the decline seen on Wednesday. Ironically, the penny Insurance stocks that endured the maximum loses permissible on Tuesday, made a comeback to record the maximum gains possible.

Activity level

The activity level, a measure of the volume and value of traded stocks, improved as both the volume and value of the stocks traded increased.

While the volume of traded stocks increased by 19.72% to 368.966 million, the value of traded stocks increased by 61.37% to N5.490 billion.

Banking Stocks accounted for the top third most traded stocks by volume, with ACCESS, FBNH and ZENITHBANK in that order. 46.338 million units of ACCESS was traded, while FBNH had 44.431 million and ZENITHBANK saw 44.016 million of its stocks being traded.

GUARANTY was the most traded stock by value with 39.003 million shares worth N1.329 billion exchanging hands in 319 deals. ZENITHBANK was the second most traded stock by value with shares worth N1.061 billion and DANGSUGAR was the third with 31.440 million shares worth N619.079 million traded in 143 deals.

The most trades was seen on ZENITHBANK (538 trades), followed by GUARANTY with 319 trades and FBNH with 275 trades.

Performance of Indices

It was a weak performance across the indices under our watch, 4 declined with only 1 index advancing.

1. Insurance index advanced by 0.29% on the back of gains by AIICO (+9.9%), CORNERST (+7.4%) and CHIPLC (+7.1%)
2. Industrial Goods Index declined by 0.02% due to the 7.0% loss recorded by CAP
3. Banking Index declined by 0.80 as ZENITHBANK lost 1.6% and GUARANTY lost 2.6%
4. Oil & Gas Index declined by 0.72 owing to price declines in OANDO (-5.0%) and ARDOVA (-4.4%)
5. Consumer Goods Index declined by 1.82 pulled down by NB (-7.1%)

Investor Sentiment

Investor sentiment as measured by market breadth (advance/decline ratio) strengthened to 0.9x from the 0.8x recorded in the previous session as 19 stocks gained against the 22 that declined.

The top five gainers by percentage are:

1. AIICO gained 9.90% to close at N1.11
2. REGALINS gained 9.09% to close at N0.24
3. FTNCOCOA gained 8.70% to close at N0.25
4. CNICHOLS gained 8.51% to close at N0.51
5. UNIONDAC gained 8.00% to close at N0.27

The top five losers by percentage are:

1. CILEASING lost 9.90% to close at N4.46
2. MANSARD lost 9.70% to close at N2.14
3. NNFM lost 9.67% to close at N6.26
4. CAPHOTEL lost 9.09% to close at N2.20
5. N lost 7.05% to close at N56.00

Outlook

We expect the mixed market performance to continue for the rest of the week.

By; Nnamdi M.