No End In Sight As NGX Equity Trading Losses Continues

Equities trading on the floor of the Nigerian Capital Market (NGX) continued in a bearish mood, closing lower on sell-offs in WAPCO (-9.9%), LINKASSURE (-8.93%), and ABCTRANS (-8.82%).

As a result, the all-share index declined further by 0.38% from its Friday, December 3, 2021 position of 42,167.91 basis points to close at 42,008.60 basis points.

The NGX equity market had hoped that with the MTN Nigeria public offer still ongoing, the market capitalization would have been on a bullish recovery due to new investor sentiment.

Consequently, the Week-to-Date and Month-to-Date losses increased to -0.38% and -2.9%, respectively, while the Year-to-Date gain moderated to +4.3%.

However, following yesterday's ASI decline, the market capitalization fell to NGN 21,920 Trillion from its Friday close of NGN22,044 Trillion.

In contrast, the total volume traded increased by 128.02% to 416.12 million units sold, valued at NGN4.47 billion and exchanged in 5,059 deals as against its Friday position of 181 million units sold, valued at NGN2.43 billion.

Although this increase was occasioned by the razzmatazz of the MTN Nigeria IPO and huge investor trading activities on the stocks of FBNH, which dominated the volume and value of share trade with NGN1.5 billion and 128 million units.

On the sector analysis, the result was completely negative as the banking (-1.4%), insurance (-1.8%), and oil & gas (-0.1%) indices, the industrial goods (-0.6%), and consumer goods (-0.3%) all closed negative, reflecting the overall bearish mood of the market.

As measured by market breadth, market sentiment was negative, as 23 companies lost relative to 9 stocks that gained.

The gainers' chart was dominated by ROYALEX (+9.43%), while CHIPLC and MEYER each had (+9.0%), respectively.

However, the losers' chart was led by WAPCO (-9.9%), LINKASSURE (-8.93%), ABCTRANS (+8.82%), and VITAFOAM (-8.68%).