Mixed Outcome In Equities Market As All Share Index Drop by 0.05%

Traders were less optimistic as the market ended trading with the All-share index falling by 0.05% to close at 43,707.30 basis points on Wednesday. This ended the rather enthusiastic two-days bullish run which hit an ASI All-Time-High(ATH) for the month so far of 43,730.55 basis points on Tuesday.

 

Accordingly, the Month-To-Date and Year-To-Date remained positive as the drop in the ASI by 0.05% was not enough to result in any negative feeling. The M-T-D and Y-T-D hovered at 3.97% and 8.53% giving a rather vibrant expectations of better trading days in the coming days.

 

However, the total volume of sales transacted on the floor of the Nigeria stock market fell by 3.57% to close at 270,701,973 units valued at over N5.62billion and exchanged in 3,861 deals sold. This drop in sales volume was just quantitative as value went up more than 61.89% from Tuesday's figure of N3.5billion and N500million more than Monday's figure of N5.011billion. This just reflected the overall mood of traders to take profit from sales opportunities presented by the likes of MTN and Flourmill whose market value sprung up by 26.46% and 26.20% valued at N1.49billion and N1.474billion respectively.

 

Despite MTNN, FLOURMILL, NESTLE, and GTCO topping the chart of trades with the most value, companies like NEIMETH, CHAMS, MBENEFIT, HONEYFLOUR and CAVERTON were the toast of investors as buy/sell options made the most gain for them, with them making as high as 10%, 9.09%,8%, 6.95% and 5.88% respectively meaning that for a company like NEIMETH who opened trading with N1.80 and closed trading at N1.98 a 10% profit was made. This could have been made possible with probable good news coming from the management of the company thus creating more confidence on its stocks.

 

Regardless, of the good news coming from the gainers chart some companies ended up damping the mood of investors as REDSTAREX and PHARMADEKO topped the loser’s chart with a 9.86% and 9.83% loss respectively.

 

Looking at the sector analysis, the banking (-1.0%), insurance (-0.3%), industrial goods (-0.3%) and oil and gas (-0.2%) indices recorded losses while the consumer goods (+1.0%) index gained. This shows a shift of attention of investors from the usual financial and energy sector investment to industries with growth potentials.  

 

Finally, going by market breadth which judges the overall mood of the market. The market was negative as we recorded 18 losers as against 16 gainers.