The Nigerian equities market on Wednesday reversed gains of the previous session as sell pressures in blue chip stocks caused the market to close in the red.
Overall, the market performance was driven by selloffs in GTCO (-1.58%), ZENITHBANK (-0.93%) alongside OANDO (-0.93%), outweighing gains in FIRSTHOLDCO (+2.46%), TRANSCORP (+1.22%) and FIDELITYBNK (+6.74%).
Consequently, the market’s benchmark, the NGX All-Share Index (ASI) was triggered to a 0.68% decline to close at 103,851.88 point, down from 104,560.02 points on Tuesday.
Overall, investors lost N444.99 billion as the market capitalisation settled at N65.26tn.
Activity metrics showed that market volume dropped 4.64% to 351.66m units, while market value surged 26.12% to N13.71bn. the number of executed trades slid by 8.22% to 12,141 units highlighting a decline in overall market participation.
Sectoral performance was mixed, as the Banking (-4.7%) and Oil & Gas (-0.1%) indices declined while the Insurance (+0.8%) and Consumer Goods (+0.3%) indices advanced. The Industrial Goods index closed flat.
Market breadth closed at 1.25 to 1 ratio, with advancing issues outnumbering declining ones. Trade deals declined by 8.22% to 12,141 deals.
ACCESSCORP (+0.47%) led the trade volume with 68.20m units traded, while GEREGU (+0.00%) led the valued chart in deals worth N5.14bn.
Trading on the NASD OTC Securities Exchange was muted, with volume plummeting by 95.01% to 36,757 units and value declining 83.62% to N1.99m, reflecting a sharp pullback in investor participation.
Despite the steep drop-in activity, the NASD Security Index (NSI) and market capitalisation remained unchanged at 3,271.0 points and N1.92tn respectively, indicating a quiet session dominated by minimal transactions across a few securities.
The overnight lending rate expanded by 9bps to 27.1% in the absence of any significant funding pressure on the system.
The NTB secondary market traded with bearish sentiments, as the average yield expanded by 6bps to 21.1%. Across the curve, the average yield declined at the short (-9bps) and mid (-1bp) segments following the demand for the 86DTM (-55bps) and 177DTM (-1bp) bills, respectively but expanded at the long (+16bps) end due to the selloff of the 240DTM (+75bps). Conversely, the average yield declined by 80bps to 28.3% in the OMO segment.
Activities in the FGN bond secondary market was quiet as the average yield remained unchanged at 18.7%.
