Bulls Exhausted As Bears Take Control of Equities Market

Investors had hoped that yesterday’s bullish recovery was going to signal a new week of the upward trend in the equities market but that was unfortunately short-lived as the bears forced a 0.22% downward trend of the NGX ASI to close at 43,349.90, with investors taking off profit from GTCO (-2.3%), ACCESS Bank (-2.3%) and FBNH (-1.6%).

Accordingly, the Week-to-Date, Month-to-Date, and Year-to-Date gains moderated to +0.22%, +3.1%, and +7.7% respectively, as this reflected the overall comparative mood of the market in a 52 weeks’ period.

The drop in the ASI was caused by a drop in the volume of shares traded as it fell from the previous day's close of 423.8 million units to close at 264.8 million units of shares sold which represented a 37.53% decline, valued at N6.08 billion and exchanged in 4,230 deals.

Continuing from its past five days’ performance, FBNH remained the most-traded stock by volume at 68.61 million units, while NESTLE was the most-traded stock by value at N2.97 billion.

Other stocks that dominated the volume chart, were INTBREW, GTCO, UNITYBANK, and ACCESS BANK.

Analysis of the sectors' performance index shows that all sectors except the industrial goods sector recorded losses with the insurance having a -0.9%, oil and gas -0.8%, consumer goods -0.7%, and banking -0.4%.

As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative, as 21 companies lost relative to 14 companies that gained. NEIMETH (-9.1%) and UNITYBANK (-8.5%) topped the losers’ chart, while ABCTRANS (+10.0%) and CHAMS (+4.6%) recorded the most significant gains of the day.

Despite the bearish close of trading, some capitalized stocks still made profits for investors. The gainers chart was dominated by ABCTRANS (+10.00%), CHAMS (+4.55%), CUTIX (+3.05%), WEMABANK (+2.35%), TRANSCORP (+2.06%).