Equities slide further as ASI drops 2.68%

The down trend recorded at the beginning of this week, on the Nigerian Stock Exchange has persisted to the third consecutive session as All-Share Index slide further by 2.68 per cent on Wednesday.

Although, stocks have notably been closing at lower prices in previous sessions, heavy losses recorded by some blue chips, including Dangote Cement- the most capitalized stock on the exchange, led to a significant dip in market capitalisation which fell N342.7bn to settle at N12.444trn.

The ASI plunged below the 37,000 market only just achieved, to close at 36,102.38 points, following a decline of 994.22 points (the highest decline so far this week), further trimming the YTD return to 34.34 percent.

Meanwhile, the banking sector remained at the core of investors attention as activity in that sector continues to dominate the NSE’s most traded chart.
FBN Holdings topped activity chart with the sale of 34.5mn shares valued at N206.8mn. Access Bank, yet to release its half year earning has also garnered investors attention recently. The stock was seen as the second most traded stock on Wednesday, with the sale of 27.4mn shares worth N276.9m.
GTBank exchanged 25.2mn shares worth N970.8m, Jaiz Bank traded 15.1mn shares valued at N12mn, while Zenith Bank transacted 12.7m shares at N284.7m.
As at the close of the market, investors in 4,822 deals had exchanged a total of 224.8million shares worth N5.1b compared to 391.6mn shares worth N5.4bn traded by investors in 5,285 deals on Tuesday.
An overview of the price movement chart, showed market closed with just 10 gainers to 31 losers, while all sectoral indices closed in the red.

The NSE Industrial Goods Index declined by 3.11 per cent. The NSE Banking Index dropped by 2.84 per cent, while the NSE Consumer goods depreciated by 0.96 per cent. The NSE’s Insurance Index and NSE’s Oil & Gas Index depreciated by 0.08 and 0.97 per cent, respectively.

Jaiz Bank led the decliners with a loss of 5 per cent to close at 76 kobo. Access Bank trailed with a loss of 4.98 per cent to close at N9.93, FCMB dropped 4.96 per cent to close at N1.15, Stanbic declined by 4.93 per cent to close at N37.03 and Dangote Cement fell 4.89 per cent to close at N214.

On the positive, CI leasing led the advancers with a gain of 5.15 per cent to close at N1.02, Vitafoam rose by 4.43 per cent to close at N2.83, UPL added 3.73 per cent to close at N2.78, Union Bank gained 3.63 per cent to close at N6 and Nascon Allied Industries fell 2.65per cent to close at N12.