- Naira edges dollar by 0.78% at official market
Bearish sentiment persists on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, with investors facing losing N62 billion at the close of Tuesday’s trading session.
The equities market benchmark index further decreased by 11bps, settling at 104,553.31 points, resulting in a year-to-date return of 39.83 percent.
Similarly, the market capitalization of listed equities dropped by N62 billion to close at N59.12 trillion.
DAARCOMM, CWG, SOVRENINS, UPDC REIT, and FIDSON were the major contributors to today’s losses, recording share price declines of -9.86 percent, -9.09 percent, -8.51 percent, -6.36 percent, and -6.25 percent, respectively.
Trading activity levels, however, showed positive results as total deals and volume increased by 5.19 percent and 6.82 percent to 9,548 trades and 307.05 million units, respectively, although the total traded value witnessed a sharp decline of 29.69 percent to N7.59 billion.
Despite the fall in the benchmark index, the Exchange accounted for more gainers (27) than losers (23). The top five gainers for the day were INTENEGINS (+10.00%), INTBREW (+9.89%), JULI (+9.85%), NEM (+9.59%), and FBNH (+9.06%), with share price gains. Performance across sectors displayed robust results as all five sub-indices tracked closed positives.
Banking, Insurance, Consumer Goods, Oil/Gas, and Industrial Goods indexes recorded gains of 1.07 percent, 0.59 percent, 0.16 percent, 0.04 percent, and 0.12 percent, respectively.
At the close of the session, FBNH emerged as the most traded security in terms of volume and value, with 37.81 million units worth N1.57 billion transacted in 658 trades.
In the money market, the Nigerian Interbank Offered Rate trended lower across most of the tracked maturities. Notably, the Overnight NIBOR declined by 1.12 percent to close at 29.88 percent. Likewise, key money market rates, including the open repo rate and overnight lending rate, nosedived to conclude at 27.89 percent and 28.76 percent, respectively.
Within the Nigerian Interbank Treasury Bills Yield arena, rates in most maturity periods observed declines. Resultantly, the Nigerian Treasury Bills secondary market demonstrated a favourable trajectory, leading to a 0.07 percent reduction in the average yield, settling at 17.50 percent.
In the bond market, trading activity was bearish, leading to a 0.20 percent increase in the average yield to 18.60 percent. In the sovereign Eurobonds market, there was positive trading activity resulting in a 0.06 percent decrease in the average yield to 10.11 percent.
In the foreign exchange market, the Naira appreciated by 0.78 percent, closing at N1, 560.57 per dollar at the official market. In the Parallel market, the Naira closed at N1, 565 to the dollar.
